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A lawsuit filed by 16 patients and patient relatives alleges Jefferson Hospital was negligent and had lax supervision and policies in 2012 when a hospital pharmacy technician stole Oxycodone that was mean to ease the severe pain of patients — including some patients fighting late-stage cancer — and replaced it with other pills that do nothing for pain. Other patients were recovering from amputation or other surgery or were accident victims.
“(There was) at least a four-month period where patients in pain, who needed pain relief, did not get their pain relief and remained in pain.” said attorney Alan Perer. “It only came to light when a patient’s daughter looked at the pill that was being given by a nurse to her mother and said that did not look like an Oxycodone.”
“This isn’t something that the hospital discovered, and that’s what’s so upsetting about this,” said attorney Jennifer Webster. “(A brother of one patient) had been begging the nurses, ‘My sister’s in pain. She’s not someone to complain like this. These medications aren’t working.”
Webster and Perer, of SPK, the Law Firm of Swensen & Perer, filed the lawsuit in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court on Wednesday..
The suit seeks to hold Jefferson Hospital responsible for not preventing the 2012 criminal actions of the then-employee who alreadypleaded guilty and served time. Fired hospital pharmacy technician Cheryl Ashcraft was sentenced to 6 to 12 months in prison, plus three years on probation. The attorneys said that when confronted, the pharmacy technician admitted to stealing the Oxycodone of patients, switching it out with other pills, leaving the patients to suffer. The pills switched for the Oxycodone were anti-nausea medicine or thyroid medication.
The hospital issued a statement via email, that said, “Immediately upon discovering this issue, Jefferson responded swiftly and appropriately in alerting authorities, terminating the employee in question and notifying potentially affected patients. At Jefferson, patient care quality and safety are our highest priorities.”
“In their last days, they saw them in agony. And they get a letter saying it was because they weren’t getting their pain medication,” Webster said.
In the letter, the hospital notified 362 patients of what happened after the employee admitted what she did.
“As a matter of public policy, we want to send a message to the hospital that you have to act responsibly, you can’t ever let this happen again to anybody else,” Perer said. The lawsuit seeks compensation and punitive damages.