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In the fall of 2014, IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital suspended — for seven weeks — a registered nurse suspected of diverting opioid pain pills and syringes for her own use.
As of this past July 27, when the Indiana attorney general filed a disciplinary complaint against the nurse, A. Crump of Muncie, she was still employed at BMH, even though she had become unfit to practice due to an opioid addiction that impaired her ability to practice safely, deputy attorney general Natalie Stidd alleges.
Opioids are a class of drugs that include the illegal drug heroin in addition to powerful pain relievers available legally by prescription.
IU Health BMH’s pharmacy notified the Drug Enforcement Administration that Crump had removed 13 tablets of the opioids hydrocodone and oxycodone, two tablets of the sedative Zolpiden, and nine syringes of the opioids morphine and hydromorphone from an automated medication dispensing system in September of 2014 — but did not chart them as administered, returned or wasted.
After entering into a two-year recovery monitoring agreement with the Indiana State Nurses Assistance Program (ISNAP), Crump was reinstated at BMH in November of 2014. In February of 2015, she disclosed to ISNAP that she was taking pain medication for an illness.
According to the attorney general, two nurse practitioners and a doctor at IU Health BMH then wrote prescriptions to Crump totaling more than 1,000 tablets of hyrdocodone from April of 2015 through February of 2016. Crump allegedly failed to inform ISNAP of most of the prescriptions — one time blaming her failure on a fax machine problem and another time claiming that the pictures of the prescriptions she had taken on her phone had been ruined when she totaled her car.
The attorney general is seeking disciplinary action against Crump’s license on grounds that she is unfit to practice, that she falsified official patient records when she diverted medication, and that she engaged in deception or fraud when she failed to disclose the opioid prescriptions to ISNAP.
Neither Crump nor her attorney, Brandon Murphy, commented for this article. A hearing before the state board of nursing has been postponed while Murphy and the attorney general negotiate a settlement.
BMH spokesperson Neil Gifford said Crump no longer works at the hospital.
“ISNAP has a strong support program in place for caregivers who need specific help,” Gifford told The Star Press in a statement. “We partner closely with them to ensure all available resources are accessible when they are needed.”
He added: “These challenges carry with them complex circumstances involving a number of systems and individuals. … we have processes in place when there is a suspicion related to the diversion of medication. At any point in that process, if a team member is deemed to be unfit, they would not be allowed to provide care and placed on a suspension.”
In an average month at BMH, 150,000 doses of medication are dispensed and administered.
“For every medication dose, our team of pharmacists, physicians and nurses have a process in place to protect our patients and to prevent any misuse of medications. We work closely with the attorney general’s office, ISNAP, the DEA and local law enforcement to monitor our day- to-day operations.”