Reporting Drug Diversion: How to Report (and Why it Matters)
Do you suspect a colleague, physician, pharmacist or nurse is diverting drugs? If so, you’re certainly not alone – drug diversion impacts an estimated 10 to 15 percent of all healthcare workers, including doctors, nurses, medical technicians, home health aides, pharmacists and support staff.
It also affects patients and their families in life-altering ways. Hundreds of patients suffer through unnecessary pain or become infected after an addicted healthcare worker used syringes intended for patients.
For these reasons, reporting suspected drug diversion is critical to stopping it. With that in mind, here are the steps you can take to report suspected drug diversion:
First: Report the incident to the healthcare worker’s supervisor or employer.
Tell someone in charge, such as a clinical supervisor, department head, or, when possible, the healthcare facility’s drug-diversion team. Be ready to describe the incident(s), behaviors and/or evidence that suggest or support the implication that that a healthcare worker is diverting drugs. Sometimes this action will be enough to encourage the individual to seek help. That supervisor or employer is responsible for investigating the incident. If diversion is confirmed, they are responsible for reporting the diversion to the appropriate law enforcement and regulatory agencies, as shown below.
After reporting the incident to the healthcare worker’s supervisor or employer:
Report the incident to HealthCareDiversion.org. This ensures the incident is added to our national database of suspected drug diversion incidents. You can submit the incident anomalously if you would like. And you can be confident that we will only publish identifiable information about the incident after it has been fully investigated and adjudicated by the appropriate authorities.
If the healthcare worker’s supervisor or employer do not investigate your report, and you still suspect diversion has occurred: Report the suspected diversion to the appropriate law enforcement and regulatory agencies, as shown below.
Suspected Drug Diversion Should Be Reported to the Following Organizations:
If Controlled Substances are missing: Send the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) a completed DEA-106 Form, Report of Theft or Loss of Controlled Substances within 24 hours that the missing drugs were discovered.
If the person suspected of diverting is a nurse, pharmacist, physician, or other licensed healthcare professional: Report the healthcare worker to their professional licensure board within your state, such as the state Board of Nursing, Board of Pharmacy, or Medical Board. For example, if reporting a nurse within the state of Georgia, call/contact the Georgia Board of Nursing.
If drug tampering has occurred: Report the suspected diversion incident to the Criminal Investigations Unit at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). As an example of tampering: the person suspected of diverting the drug replaced the medication with another substance, like removing liquid narcotic from a vial and replacing it with water.
If you suspect drugs have been stolen: Report the incident to local law enforcement, such as the police department residing in the healthcare facility’s town or jurisdiction. They will have information or resources to take the next steps in investigating the suspected diversion.
If patients might have been infected, report the incident of suspected diversion to your state Public Health Authority.
If the person who was suspected of diverting is subsequently convicted in a criminal case, or disciplined by their state licensure board: submit this fact to HealthCareDiversion.org, so that we can update the incident to reflect this event, and add this incident to our national database as part of our efforts to prevent drug diversion in the future.