Healthcare Compliance Perspective:
Compliance Officers must ensure that their provider is conducting background checks for new hires, as well as ensure that independent audits are conducted to determine potential drug diversions.
Despite being a convicted felon, a man working as a medical technician in a North Carolina nursing home has been accused of stealing medications prescribed for the adult care home residents. The facility where the accused worked is a 29-bed, three-star adult care home. The warrants filed in the case accuse the former felon of stealing multiple doses of Vyvanse-a stimulant, Hydrocodone and Tramadol-opioid painkillers.
Adult care home residents include many mentally ill or cognitively impaired adults of all ages. State regulations that try to protect residents from exploitation face limitations. Adult care homes do not have the same standards of accountability as nursing homes. Although there are laws in place for adult care homes to prevent drug diversions, there may be less day-to-day oversight happening in them and this makes them more vulnerable to drug diversion. Unlike nursing homes, there is no che
cks and balances protocol in place to control medications received from the pharmacy and distributed to the residents.
North Carolina law requires facilities to report missing drugs, and there are large fines associated with failing to notify authorities. However, the county sheriff reports that most of the drugs being sold on the streets have mostly been obtained through drug diversion in adult care facilities and nursing homes. The implication is that considerable drug diversion is not being reported.
Authorities also noted that not only are the opioids obtained through health care drug diversion feeding the opioid addiction epidemic spreading across the country, the residents for whom the medications were prescribed are being deprived and are suffering from pain that should have been relieved.
Another factor contributing to this particular incident is the fact that state and federal funding for residents on Medicaid has caused facilities to reduce expenses, and this may result in the employment of employees with questionable backgrounds-even the hiring of employees excluded by Medicare & Medicaid Services.
