Oregon Hospital Facing $303M Lawsuit After Employee Was Accused of Replacing Patients’ Fentanyl IV Bags with Water
“Defendant Asante’s employee misappropriated pain medications that were prescribed to Plaintiff Patients who were in pain,” the complaint alleged
Janet Eastman/The Oregonian via AP
Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford, OregonAn Oregon hospital has been hit with a $303 million lawsuit following allegations that one of its employees swapped out patients' medications for water, according to several news outlets.
The complaint, obtained by KDRV, was filed by 18 former patients of Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford, Oregon, against the medical facility in Jackson County Circuit Court on Tuesday, Sept. 3.
In the complaint, the patients accuse the medical center of negligence through the “actions of a hospital employee” for failing to “adequately screen and monitor” employees for drug diversion, failing to “adequately train and monitor” their employees to “maintain protocols” and failing to “properly warn and control” the “use of its unsafe tap water” among other claims.
The complaint comes after a former nurse at the hospital, Dani Marie Schofield, was arrested and charged with second-degree assault after she was accused of replacing patients’ fentanyl in IV bags with tap water, according to the Associated Press and Rogue Valley Times. According to the complaint, these actions led patients to get “bacterial infections.”
“Defendant Asante’s employee misappropriated pain medications that were prescribed to Plaintiff Patients who were in pain,” the complaint filed on Tuesday read, adding that the employee “exposed” the patients to “bacteria and non-sterile needles.”
“All plaintiffs suffered pain they say they otherwise would not have suffered and for durations of time that they would not have otherwise had to endure,” the complaint said.
The plaintiffs were informed in December by Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center that their IV bags with fentanyl were replaced with tap water, according to the complaint, per AP. Out of the 18 plaintiffs that filed the complaint, nine of them are dead, per the outlet.
The lawsuit seeks $303 million in damages for medical expenses, lost income and the pain and suffering of those who died, AP reported.
Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center and Shlesinger and deVilleneuve, the law firm representing the patients, did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
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A separate lawsuit was filed in February against the hospital and Schofield alleging that Schofield replaced a 65-year-old patient’s fentanyl IV with tap water, leading to his death, according to the Rogue Valley Times.
Schofield was arrested following a Medford police investigation, which was launched after hospital officials reported an increase of central line infections occurring at the medical center from July 2022 through July 2023, according to AP. She has pleaded not guilty.
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