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Federal law enforcement authorities are investigating UT Southwestern Medical Center after The Dallas Morning News reported on the deaths of two nurses inside hospital restrooms.
Both had overdosed on fentanyl, a potent painkiller used in hospitals. UT Southwestern declined to comment on the investigation and said it has recently improved how it tracks powerful medications.
The News confirmed the investigation by seeking documents from UT Southwestern regarding the deaths. The university notified federal authorities of the request, saying the records included correspondence with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and a federal prosecutor.
The DEA and the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas declined to confirm or deny the probe.
UT Southwestern has come under increased government scrutiny since last year’s story about the nurses’ deaths. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees hospital safety, faulted UT Southwestern in a January inspection for not telling the DEA about cases in which potentially dangerous drugs went missing.
The DEA requires close tracking of opioids and other controlled substances to make sure patients get them as prescribed — and to ensure they’re not lost or stolen. Serious lapses can result in multimillion-dollar penalties.
After the hospital inspection, UT Southwestern filed 31 reports of missing drugs with the DEA, covering a three-year span. The university said it had not previously realized the drugs were missing.
UT Southwestern told The News it was “disappointed that some past reporting to the DEA is considered to be deficient” and now takes a stricter approach when reporting. Records show that in recent months, UT Southwestern has told the DEA about several instances of missing medications.
The two nurses died at UT Southwestern’s Clements University Hospital in Dallas. One nurse died in December 2016; the other died in April 2018. UT Southwestern said at the time that it couldn’t be sure where the nurses got the drugs that killed them.
The News’ story prompted the federal hospital inspection, which focused on the two nurses, a third nurse The News had written about, and other cases. The nurses are not named in the inspection report, but The News determined their identities by matching details in the report to other documents.
Hospitals are supposed to require nurses to closely track powerful drugs for patients.
These drugs are typically stored in locked cabinets. After nurses remove a medication, they must record how much they give a patient. Any leftover medicine must be properly disposed of — and that gets recorded, too.
Most problems the inspector found involved drugs that should’ve been logged in patient or disposal records, but weren’t.
In response to the hospital inspection, UT Southwestern cited multiple improvements. Among them: closer tracking of doses after they’re removed from locked cabinets, and providing additional training to nurses.
The federal hospital citation is the only one Clements has received since opening in late 2014, records show.
Other U.S. hospitals that have come under DEA scrutiny in recent years have paid hefty penalties for not properly tracking controlled substances. In 2015, a Massachusetts hospital received a $2.3 million penalty. Last year, the University of Michigan’s hospital system was penalized $4.3 million.