Hepatitis C Outbreak Highlights the Importance of Drug Diversion Prevention in Healthcare Settings
A recent CDC report that links a nurse at a Washington State hospital to a 2018 Hepatitis C outbreak that affected 12 individuals is a sobering reminder that patients ultimately pay the biggest price for drug diversion.
Like nearly every institution that’s experienced a similar outbreak, the hospital at the center of this investigation said that safety is of “paramount importance.” So what went wrong? And what can healthcare systems learn from this latest outbreak?
The CDC recommends that healthcare facilities develop security measures to actively monitor drug dispensing systems to detect and prevent theft of narcotics and other types of drug diversion. Specifically, organizations must develop protocols “to respond to identified drug diversion” and test patients “at risk for contracting illness and measures to prevent further transmission.”
These recommendations are a great start, and we believe healthcare organizations can (and should) take additional proactive steps to effectively prevent and/or stop diversion. There are several ways they can do this:
1. Screening. The best way to stop diversion is to keep risk at bay. Hospitals can do this by bolstering background checks in the hiring process and using pre-employment drug screening programs. On-site drug diversion education programs can help current employees better understand the scope of drug diversion, as well as behaviors linked with diversion.
2. Reporting. Knowing the signs of drug diversion isn’t enough. Healthcare workers who suspect that one or more colleagues is diverting drugs need to say something by reporting relevant incidents to a clinical supervisor, local police and/or in-house drug diversion team. Anonymous reporting tools such as HealthCareDiversion.org are easy to use for patients and healthcare workers who want to do the right thing (report suspected diversion) but are afraid of retribution or other negative consequences.
3. Tracking. The sooner diversion is identified, the sooner it can be stopped. While many large hospital drug-dispensing programs involve looking at patterns of medication waste, medical records and inventory logs, it can take at least a week to establish a pattern that flags a hospital compliance team. Leveraging smarter tracking tools that can compile and analyze raw data from multiple sources can help alert compliance teams to incidents that warrant investigations much sooner.
Protecting patients is the most important job of healthcare workers and we should applaud the hospitals that are setting the bar through their comprehensive drug diversion programs.