An investigation has been launched after as many as 10 Oregon hospital patients died after a nurse allegedly switched their fentanyl IVs for tap water, medical center staff said.
Officials at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center said they alerted law enforcement in early December after suspecting that a former employee had stolen medication, the New York Post reported.
Anonymous sources from the Medford hospital told a local NBC affiliate that nine or ten people had died from infections stemming from the suspected medical malpractice.
The former nurse, who has since been fired and reported to both the medical board and police, is accused of injecting the patients with non-sterile tap water to conceal their stealing of the hospital’s pain medication, namely fentanyl.
The suspected IV-swaps have been impacting patients since at least the fall of 2022, the Rogue Valley Times reported.
The families of two victims spoke to the local outlet, sharing that hospital officials had told them that their relatives’ deaths were due to infections resulting from their pain medication being replaced with non-sterile tap water.
74-year-old Barry Samsten reportedly died in July 2023 of a bacterial infection that caused multiple organ failure and septic shock.
“I remember thinking, ‘How does a bedsore go downhill so bad?’” Samsten’s wife, Diane Rogers, said. “And to do that in the ICU, it’s like they were picking the ones who were the worse off or couldn’t talk.”
“He kept looking at me and his eyes would roll back. I’d say, ‘He’s in pain,’ and the nurse would say, ‘No, he isn’t,’” she recounted.
The family of 36-year-old combat veteran Samuel Allison got a call on December 18, telling them that his November 2022 hospitalized death was actually caused by a central line infection connected to the fentanyl-water swap.
Allison’s brother, Garrett Atwood, told the Times that his brother’s condition had stabilized after getting admitted to the hospital on October 14 for liver failure.
However, Allison developed an infection shortly after getting discharged from the ICU, and died within days after being rushed to Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
Atwood told the outlet that Asante officials informed the family that Allison’s pain medication had been “tampered with.” The grieving brother further claimed that hospital officials said the infection he developed “was directly linked to the tap water that the nurse in question was replacing it with.”
Atwood added that he was informed that the employee had been removed and was no longer working in the medical field after the medical board and law enforcement were notified,
“There was concern that this behavior resulted in adverse patient care, though the extent of the impact on those patients is yet to be determined,” Medford police Lt. Geoff Kirkpatrick said in a statement obtained by the New York Post.
He declined to say whether the deaths were caused by medication theft or tampering.
“We’re investigating whether or not that behavior led to adverse patient care, which could be death, could be all sorts of other forms or things. … We don’t know that that resulted in deaths,” the lieutenant said.
The police department also said that it has alerted any patients that may have been impacted by the suspected drug swap, though they declined to say exactly how many people have died or been affected.
It is unclear if any arrests have been made in relation to the series of incidents.
The Oregon Health Authority also confirmed that it is investigating the situation on Wednesday.
“We were distressed to learn of this issue,” the hospital said in a statement. “We reported it to law enforcement and are working closely with them.”
