Hepatitis Cases Spur Safety Measures

Kristen Diane Parker, a surgical technician, cruised for empty operating rooms at the Denver hospital where she worked. Parker would slip into the rooms and steal syringes of fentanyl, a powerful painkiller, replacing them with syringes she had filled with a saline solution. Parker, who has hepatitis C, allegedly had used those decoy syringes - the source of transmission, authorities believe - on at least 23 Coloradans now infected with the liver-damaging disease, according to her confession to investigators.

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Nurse fired for allegedly stealing drugs had been fired before

DENVER - A nurse fired from St. Anthony Central Hospital and arrested for stealing pain medication, was previously fired from Swedish Medical Center. A spokeswoman for Swedish says Jillian Fischer was fired January 28, 2008 for misconduct and was not eligible to be rehired at the hospital. She was suspended on January 3, 2008. > read more

Colorado Hep C victims may sue

A 10th case is identified, and lawyers look at Rose hospital's liability. Lawyers say that Parker's pre-employment screening by both Rose and the Audubon Surgery Center, where she worked after Rose, will be closely scrutinized should lawsuits develop. Rose was aware Parker had hepatitis C. Read more

A 10th case of hepatitis C in Colorado was linked to surgery at Rose Medical Center on Tuesday as the state health department continued to investigate new cases of the blood disease.

The latest victim of the hepatitis C outbreak — tied to a surgical technician accused of stealing syringes of the powerful painkiller Fentanyl and replacing them with her used syringes containing saline — is not one of the patients tested since Rose announced the breach Thursday.

Instead, the hepatitis C confirmation was from a prior test submitted to the state health department, said Ned Calonge, the state's chief medical officer. State investigators are interviewing all new hepatitis C victims to determine whether they had surgery at Rose during the time Kristen Diane Parker worked there.

So far, the 10 cases have been linked only through interviews with the patients and not through genetic sequencing, which the state is seeking from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Meanwhile, lawyers say they are beginning to hear from people interested in their legal options.

"There is absolutely no excuse for a patient contracting hepatitis from a dirty needle in a hospital," said Jim Leventhal, a Denver lawyer who specializes in medical malpractice and has represented Colorado patients exposed to such deadly diseases as Creutzfeldt-Jakob and HIV during hospital stays.

"There are systems in place to prevent dirty needles in a hospital from ever getting used on patients, and in my opinion, there appears to be a system failure."

As many as 5,700 surgical patients at Rose and Audubon Surgery Center in Colorado Springs could have been exposed to the liver-crushing disease.

Victims could sue, but lawsuit caps apply

"The potential victims of this are petrified. Obviously there is great concern," said Larry Schoenwald, whose Schoenwald & Thompson firm has been contacted by patients who may have been exposed.

Those patients could file malpractice lawsuits against the medical facilities.

"I would not be surprised," said Dr. Eric Steiner, a medical doctor and Denver lawyer specializing in medical malpractice with Denver's Gerash Steiner & Toray firm. "We have to know what procedures were followed and what weren't. There are not enough facts right now to know."

Colorado law caps medical malpractice awards at $300,000 for noneconomic, or "pain and suffering," damages. Total awards are capped at $1 million, but a judge can allow higher awards. A legislative attempt to increase those caps, allowing patients to sue for more, fizzled in May.

Combine the wide-ranging impact of the disease, the speculation in assigning a value to a lifetime of potential care needed to treat and manage it and the fact that Colorado juries tend to eschew large malpractice awards, and there probably won't be record-setting decisions stemming from this case.

"I would say the chances for someone to get multiple millions of dollars from exposure in this situation would be very, very low," Steiner said.

Precautions too weak, lawyer charges

There are still grounds for a lawsuit, Leventhal said.

There are many cases across the country where drug-addicted employees have pilfered narcotics from hospitals, exposing patients to danger. And those cases have led to elaborate regulatory systems that both guard the drugs and protect patients.

There are, for example, hospitals that require signatures for each syringe used and there are needles that can only be used once, Leventhal said.

"There are dozens of different precautions that should have been in place and apparently were not in place that would have prevented this from happening," Leventhal said.

Lawyers say that Parker's pre-employment screening by both Rose and the Audubon Surgery Center, where she worked after Rose, will be closely scrutinized should lawsuits develop. Rose was aware Parker had hepatitis C.

"Did they ever wonder why she had hepatitis C?" Leventhal said. "I mean, look at her Myspace page, where she said she had a fascination with needles."

Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com

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Melamedia Seminar Focuses on Vetting Prospective Healthcare Employees to Increase Data Protection
ALEXANDRIA, Va. - (BUSINESS WIRE) - April 18, 2006 - Healthcare experts agree that the biggest threat to patient privacy and data security is an organization's workforce. While, healthcare entities have substantial discretion, they also have little regulatory guidance or certainty in developing effective programs to determine that prospective employees will adequately protect protected health information.

The HIPAA security rule, for example, requires healthcare organizations to develop reasonable security and training measures, but says little about hiring practices.

States, however, have been active in this area. For example, Michigan requires criminal background checks for workers in long-term care and nursing home facilities.

To help healthcare organizations develop standards for hiring workers, Melamedia's Health Information Privacy/Security Alert is sponsoring a 90-minute audio seminar on May 24:

Protecting Patient Data at the Front Door: Vetting Prospective Employees for HIPAA and Other Data Protection Laws

Participants will be briefed on:
-- Why the importance of vetting prospective employees goes beyond HIPAA;
-- Types of questions that should be included in employment applications;
-- The need to include Privacy and Security Officers in employment decisions;
-- The usefulness of different background checks that organizations may use in evaluating prospects;
-- How state and federal laws limit what healthcare employers can ask;
-- The possible need for new Business Associate contracts provisions; and more.

THE FACULTY:

John Parmigiani, President of John C. Parmigiani & Associates, LLC. The former Director of Enterprise Standards for CMS, John was the chairman of the government-wide HIPAA Administrative Simplification Security and Electronic Signature Standards Implementation Team that created the Security Rule.

Christopher Berner, Esq. Labor and Employment Counsel for Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, which has more than 12,000 physicians and associates.

Barry J. Nadell, President of InfoLink Screening Services, a national provider of employment background checks. Barry is on the board of directors of the National Association of Professional Background Screeners. He assisted the California Legislature in amending legislation affecting how employers can protect consumers from identity theft while protecting themselves when requesting pre-employment background
checks.

Who Should Attend:
-- HIPAA Privacy & Security Officers
-- HR Professionals
-- Healthcare search firms
-- Healthcare Executives
-- Risk Managers
-- Business Associates
-- Healthcare Providers
-- Researchers
-- Health Plans
-- Clearinghouses
-- Healthcare Lawyers and Consultants

Register online at http://www.melamedia.com
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