A Texas university has agreed to pay $4.5 million in a settlement over allegations that it violated the Controlled Substance Act by allowing staff to steal fentanyl and other prescription narcotics from the school’s hospital.
The settlement, agreed upon on Nov. 30, was the result of a three-year-long DEA and U.S. Attorney’s Office investigation of the University of Texas Southwestern’s (UTSW) handling of controlled substances, a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) press release said. It began in December 2018 following the deaths of two school nurses who overdosed on fentanyl at the university hospital.
“The UTSW Hospital has an obligation to keep the highest standard of care for their patients. They also have an obligation of internal safeguards to keep controlled substances from being diverted,” DEA Dallas Special Agent in Charge Eduardo A. Chávez said in the release.
The settlement was the largest involving the theft of drugs at a hospital in Texas and the second-largest in U.S. history, the release said. It requires “an extensive corrective action plan” that includes the hiring of an external auditor to conduct audits of prescription drugs at random, a training program for employees on the signs of addiction and risks the substances pose, and the installation of surveillance cameras at dispensaries which the DEA is allowed access to on request.
“For years prior to our investigation, U.T. Southwestern exhibited an almost shocking disregard for its obligations under the Controlled Substance Act, enabling some employees to steal and abuse prescription narcotics,” U.S. Attorney Chad Meacham said in the release. “We felt that the serial compliance failures we uncovered warranted a multi-million-dollar penalty and a stringent corrective action plan.”
Patrician Norman, 32, died in 2016 after she “signed out medication for several patients without fully accounting for how they would be used,” D Magazine reported. UTSW did not notify the DEA of the missing drugs until 2019.
The death of nurse Iyisha Keller, 36, occurred 16 months later. Her body was found in a hospital bathroom with a needle in her arm labeled fentanyl, according to D Magazine.
