From the household essentials you need to grab on the way home from work to the groceries you need to cook dinner each week, Walmart is often a one-stop shop for many shoppers looking to capitalize on the retailer’s low prices.
But the company is also a popular destination for medication, competing with CVS and Walgreens as an affordable destination for your over-the-counter meds and prescriptions. If you get your prescriptions filled at Walmart, however, a new decision could limit your options.
Patients with opioid addiction who receive medication treatment through telehealth are increasingly struggling to get pharmacies like Walmart to fill their prescriptions.
Walmart and CVS pharmacies will no longer fill prescriptions for controlled substances from telehealth companies Cerebral and Done Health due to their misusing of addictive drugs like Xanax. Which has made it a turbulent time for the San Francisco-based company that is currently facing a Department of Justice subpoena for allegedly overprescribing addictive drugs like Xanax and Adderall.
Walmart’s decision follows significant concern over telehealth companies prescribing medication to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). According to The Wall Street Journal, Cerebral and Done treat tens of thousands of patients for ADHD between the two companies, and they often do so by prescribing stimulants such as Adderall.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) classifies Adderall as a schedule II controlled substance due to its “high potential for abuse” as an amphetamine. While still permitted for medical use, the agency recommends treatments like Adderall be “prescribed or dispensed sparingly.”
As a result, in-person visits were once required for stimulant prescriptions, but this restriction was eased when COVID hit and doctors were permitted to prescribe these medications remotely.
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However, nurse practitioners that previously worked for Cerebral claimed that the healthcare company pressured the prescribers to diagnose patients with conditions like anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), so they could prescribe controlled drugs like amphetamine and benzodiazepines.
Cerebral is not the only telehealth company being blacklisted by CVS Pharmacy and Walmart. Done Health, which competes against Cerebral for patient market share, will also no longer have its prescriptions honored by the two retail pharmacy giants.
Before CVS and Walmart were able to stop honoring prescriptions from the Olympic Gold Medalist Simone Biles-backed telehealth company, Cerebral stopped giving patients drugs like Ritalin and Adderall because it faced a probe from the Department of Justice.
Nevertheless, Cerebral plans to make sure patients who currently use the addictive drugs do not lose access as CVS and Walmart stop honoring their prescriptions.
Last week CEO and Founder of Cerebral Kyle Robertson was kicked out of his company. His termination followed the Department of Justice’s probe into allegations that Cerebral was overprescribing controlled substances that can be highly addictive when used inappropriately.
“Cerebral intends to fully cooperate with the investigation, which we already have conveyed to the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” the San Francisco company told DailyMail.com in an emailed statement on the matter on May 9, 2022. “At this time, no regulatory or law enforcement authority has accused Cerebral of violating any law.”
Watch the related video below about big pharmacy chains’ fair share of the opioid crisis :
