Hearing scheduled for former hospice nurses

In the charging documents against Kim Kochel and April Beckler, the state alleges that the victim was over age 60. However, Beckler’s defense attorney, Raissa Carpenter, noted that the language in the statute has changed and now requires a “vulnerable adult” to be 65 or over.

Judge Todd Cresap delayed in finding probable cause and asked both lawyers to file written motions with the court. He scheduled an arraignment for March 27. Kochel’s attorney, Tom Slorby, has issued subpoenas for people associated with the case for the arraignment.

Both Kochel and Beckler are accused of stealing drugs prescribed for hospice patients between December 2012 and Sept. 8, 2014, according to the probable cause affidavit filed with North Central District Court.

Beckler and Kochel are also charged with endangering a patient by diluting medication or giving morphine instead of the more potent hydromorphine that was prescribed to manage pain.

Each woman is charged with Class B felony endangering a vulnerable adult, with Class C felony theft of property, and conspiring to steal drugs, a Class C felony.

Beckler and Kochel were reported to the North Dakota Board of Nursing in 2014 and voluntarily surrendered their licenses after admitting to the allegations that were under investigation by the board, according to the affidavit.

A woman who had worked as a hospice nurse at the same time as Beckler and Kochel told police on March 1 that Beckler had made a confession to her in September 2014. Beckler allegedly confessed that her role in the thefts started after she and Kochel worked together after a patient died. They brought the unused medication back to the office and both ingested the medication. She then began using the medication herself and had been doing so for more than a year.

Further investigation was done this year by a supervisor and pharmacy director at Trinity Hospital into the medical and pharmacy records of 104 patients that were cared for by Beckler and Kochel. The investigation turned up multiple instances of “drug diversions” or drug thefts by one or both women.

According to testimony given at the probable cause hearing for the women on Feb. 22, all of the hospice patients in question were living either in assisted living or nursing facilities or were cared for at home. Authorities had discovered some discrepancies in record keeping for other hospice nurses in addition to Kochel and Beckler and have stepped up enforcement of the rules. Slorby argued at the hearing that Kochel had done what other hospice nurses had done. When Judge Cresap refused to allow him to continue his line of questioning and said Slorby could obtain that information in private depositions of witnesses, Slorby responded that his client cannot afford to depose the other nurses and the state won’t pay for it.

“That’s the system,” said Cresap, who said they were there only to find whether there was probable cause to let the charges move forward.

One witness at the hearing testified that the nurses who were charged had been found responsible for more discrepancies than the others.