Healthcare Compliance Perspective:
Quality Assurance and Performance Improvement studies can be utilized by skilled nursing facilities to investigate issues that are brought to their attention within the facility. As soon as the facility below was made aware of an unusual occurrence (significant increase in narcotic prescriptions), they completed an audit as well as interviews to identify the root cause of the underlying issue.
Stealing residents’ prescription pain medications has resulted in a former nursing home employee being sentenced to two years in prison followed by two years of probation. The former licensed practical nurse was also fined $350 plus court costs.
The woman was charged in March by Pennsylvania’s Office of the Attorney General, and pleaded guilty in September to “obtaining a controlled substance by misrepresentation, fraud or forgery and theft” for stealing pain pills from the nursing home residents where she was employed.
She explained that after taking the residents’ medication at different times during 2016, the former nurse described how she would fraudulently document the residents’ records as being given to them and would then use the medication to satisfy her own addiction.
At the end of 2016, the nursing home became aware of the medication theft when the medical director noticed “a significant increase in the narcotic prescriptions in the month of November 2016,” and instigated an investigation. During that investigation the former nurse was interviewed, and admitted to taking the pain medication for her own use.
This past February, an audit of the medication records revealed the theft by the nurse had involved 16 residents and that more than 600 prescription pills had been misappropriated by the woman.
In an admission to investigators, the woman described her addiction as increasing. She went from taking one pill at night to taking eight or nine pills a day.
