A Denver hospital technician was arrested after allegedly exposing thousands of patients to the disease after stealing fentanyl and swapping out needles. Now administrators are reviewing their rules.
By DeeDee Correll
By her own admission, Kristen Diane Parker cruised for empty operating rooms at the Denver hospital where she worked.
The surgical technician would slip into the rooms and steal syringes of fentanyl, a powerful painkiller, replacing them with syringes she'd filled with saline, she later confessed to investigators.
Parker, who has hepatitis C, had allegedly used those decoy syringes -- the source of transmission, authorities believe, for at least 23 Coloradans now infected with the liver-damaging disease.
Parker's arrest this summer has reverberated through the state, prompting the testing of nearly 6,000 patients at a hospital and surgery center and focusing scrutiny on healthcare safety.
"The system is broken," said a 41-year-old Denver woman who contracted hepatitis C after a minor surgery at Rose Medical Center. She spoke on the condition of anonymity. "The system failed not only me, but Kristen. She has an addiction. It was too easy for her to get that drug." As Colorado wraps up its testing, with more than half of the exposed patients believed to be infection-free and results pending for about 2,100 people, two other states where Parker worked are probing the extent of damage she may have wrought.
No comments:
Post a Comment