Colorado Nurse Aide Convicted of Stealing Nursing Home Residents’
Medication Loses License
Failure to secure controlled medications to prevent unauthorized access and theft of residents’ narcotic pain medications may result in significant medication errors, interfere with residents’ pain management, and result in substandard quality of care with fraudulent submission of claims.
Compliance Perspective – Theft
Policies/Procedures: The Compliance and Ethics Officer, with the Administrator, Director of Nursing, and Consultant Pharmacist, will review policies and procedures involving protocols for limiting access and securing controlled substance medications.
Training: The Compliance and Ethics Officer with the Director of Nursing will ensure that staff are trained to respond in a timely manner to concerns about possible theft of narcotics and indications that a resident’s pain medication is not being provided. Additionally, nursing staff should be reminded to keep medication cabinet keys secured at all times.
Audit: The Compliance and Ethics Officer should personally conduct an audit of critically ill and dying residents to ensure that they are receiving the medications prescribed for their pain management, and that their pain is properly managed.
A Colorado nursing home Certified Nurse Aide (CNA) was convicted recently after pleading guilty to the lesser of two charges: a felony charge for theft from an at-risk person and a misdemeanor charge for neglect of an at-risk victim. Initially, the Colorado State Board of Nursing suspended the aide’s license, but has now revoked it for “stealing drugs and other items from residents” and being “engaged in conduct that would constitute a crime.”
When police searched the defendant’s apartment, they found numerous bottles of medications, pill packets, and syringes on the coffee table. Some of the bottles still had labels with the names of the patients they were prescribed for on them.
The internal investigation conducted by the nursing home found that the defendant bypassed the nursing home’s medication safety mechanisms in order to steal the medication intended for sick and dying residents. The defendant admitted to “borrowing” the keys to the medication cabinet, or in at least one instance taking the medications directly from a resident’s room. The nursing home fired the CNA after the internal investigation was completed.
The court sentenced the convicted CNA to two years of probation and fined her several thousand dollars.
