Massachusetts Nursing Home Nurse Charged with Drug Tampering
Providing medication to residents that has been diluted in order to hide the diversion of a controlled substance for personal use or personal gain may result in significant medication errors, charges of immediate jeopardy, and might result in the submission of false claims.
Compliance Perspective – Tampering
Policies/Procedures: The Compliance and Ethics Officer with the Administrator, Director of Nursing, and Consultant Pharmacist, will review policies and procedures involving security and accounting of controlled substance medications.
Training: The Compliance and Ethics Officer with the Director of Nursing will ensure that staff are trained and competent in the control protocols for preventing and discovering drug diversions.
Audit: The Compliance and Ethics Officer with the Director of Nursing should personally conduct an audit by checking the narcotic reconciliation process for all shifts and examining the narcotic book to see if there are missing signatures or if anything is noticeably out of order. Residents receiving narcotics for pain should be interviewed to determine if their administered pain medications are managing their pain.
A licensed practical nurse working in a Massachusetts nursing home has been charged in federal court with one count of tampering with a consumer product—morphine, a Schedule II controlled substance used for pain relief.
The alleged drug tampering occurred while the defendant was working as a registered nurse in a nursing home. The nurse allegedly tampered with three bottles of morphine sulfate that had been prescribed for a hospice patient. The tampering involved extracting the morphine and replacing it with another liquid to avoid being discovered. The effect of the tampering reduced the potency of the three bottles of morphine sulfate to between 4-29% making it much less effective as a pain reliever for the resident for whom it was prescribed.
The charging statute provides for a sentence of no greater than 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of $250,000. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
