Cheshire Medical Center to pay $2 million in opioid settlement

“Cheshire Medical Center’s failure to fulfill its obligations under the Controlled Substances Act enabled the theft of prescription narcotics — including powerful opioids such as fentanyl, which led to a shockingly high percentage of drugs missing from CMS’s inventory,” Young said.

An April 2022 audit by the Drug Enforcement Administration found that nearly 18,000 controlled substance units were missing from the hospital. According to the agreements, the problem began in April 2020 and lasted through April 2022.

Young said the hospital’s failures warranted a multimillion dollar penalty and stringent plan to correct the failures.

The Keene hospital, which is part of Dartmouth Health, acknowledged the settlement in a statement. “Cheshire Medical Center self-reported the diversion, immediately undertook an internal investigation, and fully cooperated with the DEA’s investigation,” said Matthew Barone, Cheshire’s vice president of communications.

In February 2022, hospital officials told the Drug Enforcement Administration that a nurse had stolen 23 intravenous bags of fentanyl solution from an automatic medication dispensing machine, which led the DEA to launch an investigation. That nurse died the following month, according to officials at the Department of Justice.

Local news reports from the Keene Sentinel and Union Leader reviewed documentation from the New Hampshire Office of Professional Licensure and Certification, in which Alexandra Towle, a nurse in the hospital’s ICU, self-reported that she had stolen fentanyl from the hospital. According to her obituary, she died unexpectedly in March 2022. She was 30 years old and was survived by her son.

Jessica Kuron, a spokesperson for the United States Attorneys Office, confirmed that Towle is the nurse who allegedly stole the drugs, but said she was not found guilty of that crime before her death.

The hospital also found that 634 additional bags of fentanyl weren’t accounted for — some had been stolen, while other nurses had either administered or wasted the rest without properly documenting it.

Hospital surveillance footage showed that the nurse who stole drugs came to the hospital’s medication room in her street clothes during her days off, and other employees who were in the room with her at the time didn’t report it, according to the settlement.

Barone said the hospital is taking steps to prevent this kind of theft from happening in the future.

“Since discovery of the diversion, Cheshire Medical Center has been intensely focused on enhancing its policies and practices to prevent future occurrences, including extensive training and education of clinical staff, hiring a drug diversion specialist, enhancement of physical security measures, deployment of cutting-edge controlled substances surveillance software, and implementing other new practices for oversight of controlled substances,” he said in a written statement.

Cheshire Medical Center has 10 business days to pay the Attorney’s Office for the District of New Hampshire, according to the agreement. Kuron said the settlement money would go to the government and would benefit taxpayers.

The hospital also agreed to a three-year corrective action plan, which includes securing the hospital’s medication rooms, daily review of fentanyl bags, establishing a diversion response team, and hiring external auditors who will perform monthly audits for the first year and quarterly for the following two years.

Amanda Gokee can be reached at amanda.gokee@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @amanda_gokee.