An Oregon hospital is being sued after a nurse allegedly killed nine patients by switching their fentanyl to tap water.
Attorneys filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford on behalf of living and deceased patients, accusing the facility of negligence and failing to adequately oversee how medications were administered.
The $303 million lawsuit comes after Dani Marie Schofield, a former nurse at the hospital, was charged with killing Horace Wilson, 65, when she stole the supply of fentanyl he was using to manage his pain and replaced it with contaminated water.
The new complaint names 17 other patients whose medications Ms. Schofield also allegedly changed, including the families of nine people who died.
Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford, Oregon, is being sued after nurse Dani Schofield allegedly stole fentanyl from patients and replaced it with water.
According to another lawsuit, Horace Wilson, 65, died after Schofield allegedly replaced his supply of fentanyl with water, causing a bacterial infection and sepsis.
The hospital is named as a defendant in the new lawsuit. In February, Mr. Wilson’s family filed a separate lawsuit naming both the hospital and Ms. Schofield.
Asante is accused of failing to oversee the administration of medications or prevent drugs from being diverted from patients to its employees.
Other claims include failing to adequately screen employees, allowing tap water to have unreasonable levels of bacteria, failing to adequately warn and control the use of unsafe tap water, and acting indirectly through the acts of its employees, among others.
Medford police began investigating the situation late last year after the department said it “received numerous calls from people asking if they or a family member had been affected by the suspicious actions of the former Asante employee.”
According to the lawsuit, the hospital began informing an unspecified number of affected patients in December that a hospital employee had replaced their fentanyl with tap water in IV drips.
This led to bacterial infections in each patient, as the water was supposedly contaminated.
The complaint states that “all of the plaintiff patients were infected with a bacteria associated exclusively with waterborne transmission.”
According to the lawsuit, all of the patients suffered “mental anguish.” Nine of them reportedly died as a result of the nurse’s actions.
Ms. Schofield was arrested in June and charged with 44 counts of second-degree assault.
He left his job the following month and pleaded not guilty. He said The Lund Report“I’m sure the truth will come out.”
It is not clear exactly why Ms Schofield was stealing the drugs.
One victim of Schofield’s alleged actions was Wilson, who was admitted to Asante in January 2022 after falling from a three-metre-high ladder and damaging her spleen, an avocado-sized organ located in the left rib cage that helps filter blood.
Doctors removed his spleen, but within days of the operation his condition “worsened” after Ms Schofield allegedly put water into his IV.
Mr. Wilson was infected with the bacteria Staphylococcus epidermidis, which flooded his bloodstream and “became essentially ineradicable,” according to a separate lawsuit filed by his family seeking $11.5 million.
He then suffered multiple organ failure due to sepsis, a deadly overreaction of the immune system that causes the body to attack healthy organs and tissues.
She died on Feb. 25, about a month after she was admitted. Before she died, Wilson had regained enough cognitive function to tell medical staff in the intensive care unit that she “no longer wanted to live this way,” her family’s lawsuit claims.