Page 55 - 2017 V1 InsideOut

It’s happening in prestigious teaching facilities, small hospitals and retail pharmacies, from east to west coasts and every state in between. It occurs throughout multiple hospital care units and at every level, from anesthesi- ologists to surgeons, pharmacists to technicians, from nurses to aides to janitors. Drug diversion, where a hospital worker pilfers prescription drugs for personal use or to sell as street drugs, is said to mirror America’s opioid epidemic of 10 to 15 percent of the population.
Statistics collected by the CDC highlight the disturbing public trend: From 1999 to 2014, the age-adjusted rate for drug overdose deaths more than doubled, from 6.1 per 100,000 population to 14.7 in 2014. From 2010 to 2011, oxycodone was the leading cause of drug overdoses; heroin reached number one from 2012 to 2014. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, moved up from number eight in 2010 to number ve in 2014.1 In 2013 alone, cost of the U.S. prescription opioid crisis was estimated at $78.5 billion.2
Reliable statistics for drug diversion by healthcare professionals, however, are not available because addicted healthcare workers are frequently shielded from consequence. Shields come in the form of denial, disbelief and apathy from coworkers and colleagues, from inconsistent reporting to local and federal law of cials and state licensing boards, from non-punitive policies that expunge an offense with treatment-in-lieu-of-conviction policies, and from fear of negative publicity in the community.
Patients, however, receive no such immunity from the addict who works in healthcare.
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