Kentucky
Kentucky hospital to pay $4M for opioid recordkeeping claims
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky hospital system can pay a $4.4 million civil penalty for defective recordkeeping that enabled a pharmacy technician to divert 60,000 doses of opioids, federal prosecutors introduced.
Pikeville Medical Middle self-reported the diversion, cooperated with a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation and has taken “substantial steps” to handle its issues forward of the settlement, which doesn’t decide any legal responsibility, based on a press release Wednesday from the U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace in Lexington.
“The scale of this effective exhibits how severe this case is,” mentioned agent Todd Scott, who leads the DEA’s Louisville division. “Hopefully, Pikeville Medical Middle will do a greater job sooner or later with their report protecting and the ensuing hurt inflicted on the group will be reversed.”
Prosecutors mentioned a failure to take care of correct and full inventories and shelling out data enabled Kayla Nicole White Perry, then a pharmacy technician on the hospital, to divert greater than 60,000 doses of oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone from the hospital system’s narcotics vault and Pyxis MedStations from January 2016 by way of early September 2018.
She and her husband William Chad Perry pleaded responsible in 2020 to a conspiracy to distribute the medication. She was sentenced to 41 months in jail, whereas he was sentenced to 38 months.
The hospital system advised the Lexington Herald Chief that no sufferers there have been disadvantaged of remedy or harmed due to the diversion.
A 3-year memorandum of settlement between the hospital and the DEA contains inspection, reporting and coaching necessities.
“We have now taken a number of steps and invested in new know-how to higher detect and forestall remedy diversion in our facility,” a hospital assertion mentioned. “Pikeville Medical Middle and our present management is dedicated to being the supplier and employer of alternative for healthcare within the southeastern Kentucky group by offering high quality care to our sufferers.”