Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced on December 8, 2023, that a Montgomery County Grand Jury had returned a nine-count indictment against a 45-year-old woman for the theft of over 1,000 Hydrocodone tablets from a Montgomery area nursing home, while she was employed as the facility’s director of nursing (DON).
The indictment alleges that the DON, on nine different occasions from December 2022 to March 2023, obtained 114 to 120 Hydrocodone tablets from the nursing home’s contract pharmacy by submitting phony prescriptions purportedly for residents of the nursing home, which she then kept.
The Alabama Department of Public Health referred the nursing home complaint to the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit for investigation and prosecution. The case was presented to the November 2023 term of the Montgomery County Grand Jury.
Theft of any controlled substance is considered Theft of Property Second Degree, a Class C felony, and punishable by one to ten years imprisonment and up to a $15,000 fine. The DON surrendered at the Montgomery County Detention Facility on December 7. She was released on a $50,000 bond.
Compliance Perspective
Issue
Experts estimate that 10–15 percent of our nation’s population struggles with impairment from alcohol or drug dependency. Nurses, as part of this statistic, are distinct due to their ability to access drugs in the workplace. Because as many as one in ten nurses could be affected by a substance use disorder, it is critical that each facility implements a proactive diversion-prevention program. The consequences of failure to do this include a negative impact on residents’ quality of care, legal and ethical concerns, and potential for high scope and severity citations once a diversion problem is uncovered. Nurses who divert medications have developed a number of ways to conceal diversion. Efforts must identify the types of medications most likely to be taken, signs that diversion has taken place, and signs of impairment.
Discussion Points
- Review your policies and procedures on preventing, identifying, and responding to drug diversion. Update as needed.
- Train appropriate staff on actions that can be taken to prevent, identify, and respond to any suspicion of drug diversion. Provide education on the impact of drug diversion on residents as a form of abuse and neglect, staff responsibility to report concerns immediately, and the consequences of theft of controlled substances. Document that the trainings occurred, and place the signed document in each employee’s education file. Med-Net Academy (MNA) offers all clients three PowerPoint training programs in our new category of Substance Use. Visit MNA to access all three. Additionally, a program titled Drug Diversion – What Every Facility Needs to Know is available in the Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Category of MNA and is available to all Med-Net clients.
- Periodically audit to ensure that all controlled substances are accounted for each shift, and that proper documentation of controlled substances has occurred. Your consultant pharmacist can be included in this effort.
*This news alert has been prepared by Med-Net Concepts, LLC for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide legal advice.*
