Falsifying a prescription expiration date as written by the prescribing doctor - insubordination of altering a document

We have an optical practice. An employee took it upon himself to alter the expiration date of a contact lens prescription to make it a current refillable prescription. The prescription was expired for 7 months per state law. We have a paper trail, this employee first emailed the patient the expired prescription and then altered the expiration date and emailed the altered prescription to the patient. The employee then went back into the patient's file and changed the date back to the expired date. We found out about this because the patient called to reorder more contact lenses.

Another employee told the patient we could not fill it due to the prescription being expired. The patient then said he had a copy that states the prescription is current and fillable, which he did. Would this be two different issues? One for insubordination altering a document without the consent of the doctor and a second legal issue for falsifying a prescription as written by the prescribing doctor.

The incident is serious, affecting the credibility of the institution. He had no authority to change the expired prescription to a current and fillable one unless ordered so by the doctor concerned. So this amounts to dishonesty and fraud. It will amount to insubordination too if it is in violation of any express orders. But before taking action, pl be sure that there exists no such practice of altering the prescription date prevalent in your establishment. If this is an isolated incident then you shall take strict action so that you are ethical and it serves as a lesson to all others.