Virginia: For Statute of Limitations Purposes, Pharmacy is “Health Care Provider”

The Court of Appeals of Virginia held that a local pharmacy was a “health care provider” under Va. Code Ann. § 65.2-605.1(F), and as such, it could not seek reimbursement for prescription medication where it waited more than one year after its last reimbursement to seek a payment order through the state Commission. The pharmacy contended that it was not a health care provider and, therefore, it was not subject to the one-year statute of limitations. The court disagreed, turning to Va Code Ann. § 8.01-581.1, which defined a “health care provider” as “a person, corporation, facility or institution licensed by this Commonwealth to provide health care or professional services as a … pharmacist.” The Court said that the General Assembly, therefore, had mandated that pharmacies were to be considered health care providers under Code § 65.2-714(D).

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the co-Editor-in-Chief and Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law(LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Summit Pharmacy, Inc. v. Costco Wholesale, 2021 Va. App. LEXIS 49 (Mar. 30, 2021)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 126.13.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law

For a more detailed discussion of the case, see

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