Eastport’s only pharmacy has lost its license and shuttered operations after state officials concluded its pharmacists had over-filled a controlled substance, failed to maintain accurate records and neglected to train pharmacy staff, among other violations.
A consent agreement signed July 23 officially revoked the license of Eastport Family Pharmacy, which was opened by Bangor-based pharmacist Benjamin Okafor in 2014. Okafor also owns Machias Family Pharmacy, whose license remains active.
The closure will leave residents of Eastport and adjacent towns without a local pharmacy. The closest place for those residents to now fill prescriptions will be the Walmart in Calais, about 28 miles from downtown Eastport.
“These folks have had to deal without a local pharmacy for some time,” Eastport City Manager Brian Schuth said, referring to the decade prior to Okafor’s business opening during which Eastport’s closest pharmacy was in Calais. “When the newer pharmacy showed up, it was a big deal that things were going to be convenient again.”
In February, federal drug enforcement agents seized the controlled substances records of both of Okafor’s pharmacies. No formal changes have been filed in relation to those raids.
Controlled substances are medications that are more strictly regulated than typical prescription drugs because of their potential for causing dependence.
Okafor has a history of being disciplined by the state’s pharmacy board and has been cited most often for erroneously kept records and improperly dispensed medications, according to investigative documents filed in a public federal database.
Okafor did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Bangor Daily News. The phone number listed for Eastport Family Pharmacy now rings directly to the Machias location, which did not answer phone calls throughout the day on Monday.
After the February raid, the Machias branch was fined $5,000 for operating last year without a supervisory pharmacist.
The latest consent agreement, which ended the pharmacy’s dozen years of service in Eastport, says the pharmacy over-filled a 70-tablet prescription of clonazepam, a Schedule IV controlled substance — often sold under its brand name of Klonopin — that can treat panic attacks and certain seizure disorders.
The pharmacy filled the prescription, which had no refills, three times within a week, according to the consent agreement, which was signed by the Maine Board of Pharmacy, the state’s Attorney General’s Office and Eastport Family Pharmacy.
Further inspection of the Eastport facility revealed sanitation issues and expired medications still sitting on pharmacy shelves, according to the agreement.
“The returned (excess) Clonazepam referenced above were found in a basket containing other returned medications, including what appeared to be other mis-fills,” the agreement says. “Board investigators inspected a back room attached to the pharmacy that appeared to be used as a break room. A large volume of will-call medications dating back several years, including controlled substances, were found here, however the room contained no computer terminal and no cameras.”
The pharmacy also failed to consistently use a state-mandated database to track controlled substances, nor did it maintain a daily delivery log, the agreement says. The two erroneously filled clonazepam prescriptions were delivered to the patient’s home, according to the agreement.
One of Eastport’s pharmacists, Victor Mubang, who was on duty when the prescriptions were improperly filled, had not logged into the prescription monitoring program system at all between Jan. 9 and April 3, according to the agreement.
Mubang, as the designated pharmacist in charge, was responsible for entering data into the tracking database, which informs providers of a patient’s medication history. Roughly 298 prescriptions had no pharmacists of record, the agreement says.
The pharmacy did not provide investigators with timecards to verify who was on duty at the time of the errors, which appeared to stem from Feb. 25, when a pharmacist technician — who later informed state investigators that they had not received any formal training — printed multiple labels for a single prescription. The pharmacy did not provide evidence that technician training was ever provided, according to the agreement.