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A former nurse was charged with multiple felonies after a state investigation alleges she took narcotic painkillers from patients at a Bozeman nursing home.
On Friday, the Montana Attorney General’s Office filed a motion seeking to charge Kristy June Bonnet with three felony counts of fraudulently obtaining dangerous drugs.
An initial appearance has not been set.
According to charging documents filed by Assistant Attorney General Chris McConnell:
In November 2015, the director of nursing at Mountain View Healthcare Community in Bozeman contacted the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit of the Montana Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation.
Personnel at the facility had reported that Bonnet substituted a partial pill of an unknown medication for a tablet of oxycodone, an opioid pain medication.
An agent with the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit interviewed a patient, who had been admitted to Mountain View on Oct. 5, 2015. The patient was prescribed oxycodone and methadone, another opioid pain medication.
On Nov. 6, Bonnet gave the patient two methadone tablets and a supposed oxycodone pill. When the patient put the oxycodone pill into her mouth, she felt a jagged edge. She took the pill out and examined it and discovered it was not oxycodone.
Later that day, Bonnet tried to give the patient the other half of the jagged pill. When the patient confronted Bonnet, the patient said Bonnet told her she had made a mistake then gave her an actual oxycodone pill.
The patient reported the encounter to Mountain View staff. She was suspended pending an internal investigation but decided to resign.
The jagged pill was later tested and found to be an over-the-counter anti-diarrheal medicine.
Investigators interviewed a second patient, who had also been admitted to Mountain View in October 2015.
The patient had been prescribed hydrocodone, an opioid pain medication. Records that Bonnet filled out showed that she gave the patient at least eight hydrocodone pills. But the patient said she never received any of those pills.
And a third patient reported that, while Bonnet’s records showed that the patient was given eight doses of hydrocodone over the course of a week in October and November 2015, she mainly took Tylenol during that time and only took hydrocodone infrequently.
Bonnet had a previous history with diverting medication from patients when she worked at the Tobacco Root Mountain Care Center in Sheridan.
A patient who was in that facility in July 2015 reported that Bonnet’s records showed that she gave the woman doses of hydrocodone during the early morning hours on two different days. However, the patient said she never received the medication during the middle of the night, nor was she ever woken up by any nurse for medications.
Staff at Tobacco Root Mountain Care Center reported that Bonnet would treat patients for pain even though they were not complaining of pain.
Staff also recalled other suspicious behaviors, including physical indicators of potential substance abuse and being found handling narcotics in a locked medicine room with the lights off while holding a flashlight.
During an interview with investigators in January 2016, Bonnet denied diverting any narcotics from patients at Mountain View, saying she would not use patient medications for herself.
Bonnet said she made medication errors while at Mountain View. She said she had no idea how one of the patients received a partial pill. She said any errors she made were due to being pregnant and overworked.
As for the second patient, Bonnet said she may have given her too many narcotics, but felt that she was treating the patient’s pain and that it was not a criminal act.