Nurse Arrested on Six Counts of Fraudulently Obtaining Drugs

A nurse at St. Anthony Central Hospital has been accused of stealing narcotics and faces six criminal charges.

Jillian Fischer was arrested on six counts of fraudulently obtaining controlled substances between May 24 and June 6, 2009.

Fischer, who has been released on $3,000 bail, allegedly took Dilaudid, Fentanyl, Vicodin, Ativan, morphine and Valium from the hospital. An arrest affidavit said Fischer told co-workers she injected herself with Dilaudid, a form of morphine.

Hospital spokeswoman Bev Lilly said none of patients were deprived of medication and the case did not involve tampering.

Fischer also did not tell St. Anthony Central that she had previously pleaded guilty to a felony. Nor did she disclose that she was fired from Swedish Medical Center for misconduct in January 2008, said Bev Lilly, a St. Anthony Central spokeswoman. The agency does not do background checks when issuing nursing licenses because it doesn’t have the money, staff or time to do so. The exception is when an applicant marks that he or she had a previous run-in with the law, said DORA spokesman Chris Lines.

Lilly said Fischer’s application to St. Anthony Central did not list that she had ever worked at Swedish Medical Center.

Fischer started work at St. Anthony Central in April 2008 and was fired June 11. The Denver District Attorney’s Office filed six counts against Fischer on Monday, charging her with obtaining a controlled substance by deceit.

Police arrested her July 16, alleging she stole pain medication, including Valium, fentanyl and morphine, and injected herself with the drugs while she was working at St. Anthony Central. The hospital says it has no reports of patients being harmed.

According to a record filed by Swedish Medical Center with the state health department and reviewed by 9Wants to Know, the hospital received two reports of patients not receiving their pain medications Jan. 3, 2008. Fischer was suspended the same day.

The report says Swedish Medical Center conducted an internal investigation and found that the nurse would sign out two Percocet tablets and one Dilaudid tablet. According to the report, the medications were not properly administered to patients. The facility then fired the nurse.