DEA documented theft from 2017 as West Virginia grappled with opioid crisis
WVU Health Systems and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of West Virginia entered into a $4.1 million settlement last week, according to a report by the Associated Press. The agreement resolves allegations that the hospital system failed to stop nurses and other staff from stealing controlled substances over a seven-year period that ran from 2017 through 2024 — a span during which West Virginia was engulfed in a deadly opioid epidemic.
The Drug Enforcement Administration launched an investigation in 2022 and found systemwide theft and lax recordkeeping, according to the settlement. Federal officials concluded that the state’s largest hospital system did not take sufficient steps to report the thefts or to prevent them from recurring.
Details in the settlement document show that problems date to at least January 2017, when the hospital system failed to report a suspicious order for Dilaudid, a powerful synthetic opiate that the Mayo Clinic describes as a last-resort painkiller. By 2018, hospital officials in the Morgantown area recognized a pattern of drug diversion.
In February of that year, a patient complained that she had not received her prescribed Percocet, a mild painkiller, according to the settlement. Records show the suspected thief, a medical provider, was seen nodding off at the nurse’s station.
The settlement mandates that WVU Health Systems adopt new procedures to prevent future thefts and to report any suspected diversions to the appropriate authorities. The $4.1 million payment resolves the federal investigation, though the settlement was reached as West Virginia continued to grapple with the opioid crisis.