What happens if a nurse steals narcotics

Many nursing home residents struggle with chronic pain, and they turn to fentanyl to manage it. The drug is a popular one in illicit marketplaces partially because it comes in more forms than any other painkiller. Fentanyl comes in transdermal patches, nasal spray, lozenges, injectable liquid, and more.

Most importantly, there is a high demand in the black market because fentanyl is highly addictive. Oxycodone is another tightly controlled prescription medication that is often a target among thieves. As a Schedule II substance, it is highly regulated, but the U. Drug Enforcement Agency DEA monitors xycodone in a particular way because of the impact this drug has on the opiate crisis in America.

For families, it is important to know how this type of theft occurs. Workers steal medications by:. Prescription pills are the property of the person who holds the prescription. Anyone who takes them is stealing. Moreover, doctors prescribe these pills to seniors because they need them.

Without their medication , their health could deteriorate or they can languish in pain. Like the facility in Middleton, nursing home administration can also combat drug theft by medication-counting procedures and drug testing. Despite the valiant efforts of many facilities, drug theft still occurs with alarming frequency.

Nursing homes present the perfect conditions that facilitate this practice:. Drug theft in a nursing home is particularly dangerous.

The employer is almost always going to be the entity that discovers the unaccounted-for medications. It will be a result of one of a few red flags. Charting errors comprised of missing doses, improperly wasted medication, Pyxsis discrepancies or giving more frequent medication than the rest of the nurses. Any one of these 3 will precipitate an internal investigation by the employer including an interview with the nurse.

The interview may or may not include a drug test. If the employer believes that you are impaired while at work, they will drug test you to prove it. If they only SUSPECT you of diverting, they will probably not order a drug test and may even decline to give you one even if you offer. Remember when I said that each entity will take action if they can prove theft or diversion? The employer can terminate you simply for the charting errors.

An Indiana Attorney General Medicaid fraud diversion investigator and DEA diversion investigator were assigned to assist the investigation. Travis submitted to a urine test on March 6 after she was interviewed. She tested positive for cocaine and her employment was terminated on March During a follow up interview with diversion investigators in April , Travis denied stealing the medication and said she was sloppy in her handling and documentation of the drugs, according to the probable cause affidavit.

She also claimed doctors often forgot to enter verbal orders into the system, but other employees said doctors do not give verbal medication orders because they are required to enter them into the system themselves, according to the probable cause affidavit. This ensures the incident is added to our national database of suspected drug diversion incidents.

You can submit the incident anomalously if you would like. And you can be confident that we will only publish identifiable information about the incident after it has been fully investigated and adjudicated by the appropriate authorities. They will have information or resources to take the next steps in investigating the suspected diversion.