Omnicare, America’s largest pharmaceutical provider for the elderly, was just trying to conduct business as usual. The company released a standard press statement in August 2005 saying it was working to adopt a new government program–Medicare Part D–and did not foresee any problems. A short time later, CEO Joel Gemunder said he felt confident the forthcoming transition would not harm the company.
But Omnicare did not properly educate its drug-plan suppliers on pharmacy care practices and ran into database problems related to the program. These errors cost the company $9.8 million during the switch to Plan D.
