How is drug diversion impacting patients and others?

When healthcare workers divert drugs, they are putting everyone at risk: themselves, their patients (e.g., through the spread of disease via shared needles), and their peers in the medical system.

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted in their research on drug diversion by healthcare providers, since 1983, drug diversion has led to dozens of outbreaks of Hepatitis C and other bloodborne infections (with a higher concentration of outbreaks between 2004 and 2013). And that’s only the diversion they know about. Hundreds, if not thousands, of incidents of diversion go undetected – oftentimes until it’s too late.

Drug diversion has financial consequences, too. For healthcare systems, incidents such as the Rose Medical Center 2009 outbreak in Denver, which was linked to a single healthcare worker infecting 18 patients, had legal and financial implications.