No charges filed, despite ex-hospital employee’s admission he stole patients’ painkillers
More than five months have passed since a former Des Moines hospital employee admitted to stealing painkillers that were be used to treat hundreds of patients, but no criminal charges have been filed.
Victor Van Cleave was a pharmacy technician at Iowa Methodist Medical Center, who was accused in 2016 of stealing liquid fentanyl and hydromorphone. Many of the medications were meant to be used for patients undergoing surgery or giving birth.
Van Cleave allegedly used a syringe to remove the medications from vials, then replaced them with sterile water. Other hospital staff members, unaware of the thefts, then tried to treat patients’ pain with the water. Patients have said the lack of medication left them in excruciating pain.
Van Cleave relinquished his state license in a March 7 settlement with the Iowa Board of Pharmacy. The settlement documents say he stole 252 vials of fentanyl and 18 vials of hydromorphone. He signed the documents, which say, “Respondent admits the allegations.”
Iowa Methodist faces lawsuits from several former patients who say they suffered needless pain because they were treated with water instead of medication.
Nancy Burton of Des Moines is one of those patients. She said she was affected during two visits to Iowa Methodist’s emergency department, where she was treated with water instead of medication for sharp pain from kidney stones. She said Wednesday she doesn’t understand why no criminal charges have been filed, given that the former pharmacy technician has admitted to the thefts. “It’s aggravating and depressing,” she said. “I wonder every day, ‘What’s what?'”
Fentanyl and hydromorphone are opioids, which are effective painkillers but also are fueling the country’s drug-abuse epidemic. Illicit drug dealers reportedly have been adding forms of fentanyl to heroin to boost its potency. The practice is being blamed for a national wave of overdose deaths. Authorities have not said what allegedly became of the medications stolen from Iowa Methodist Medical Center.
Courtney Rowley, a lawyer for Burton and several other former patients, said at a press conference in February that hospital administrators should have noticed the missing medications more quickly. “This was a systematic failure, an institutional failure, a failure to people who trusted this medical institution,” Rowley said.
Dusty Chapline, a Des Moines police officer who is a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits, said at the press conference that she gave birth to her first daughter at Iowa Methodist on Sept. 22, 2016. Chapline had to receive a second epidural during her 16 hours of labor after the first was ineffective, causing some of the “worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life,” she told reporters. “It was horrible,” she said. “I told my husband that I didn’t want to have another kid.”
Hospital leaders have defended their response to the situation, but they declined further comment Wednesday. Van Cleave could not be reached for comment.
After the thefts were discovered, the hospital urged as many as 731 patients who were affected to get tested for HIV and hepatitis C, because syringes were used in the thefts. The pharmacy technician agreed to be tested for infectious diseases and was negative, a hospital spokeswoman said in February.
But two of the former patients listed in a February lawsuit said that they tested positive for hepatitis C after receiving care at Iowa Methodist Medical Center while the thefts were going on. The virus, which can be spread through dirty needles, is a liver infection that develops into a lifelong ailment for most people who contract it and can ultimately lead to liver failure and cancer.
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