Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center now faces over $488 million in lawsuits by those claiming their intravenous pain medication was swapped with non-sterile tap water. Police say infections caused by diversion of the synthetic opioid fentanyl killed 16 people.
The latest complaint, filed on Nov. 14, seeks $22.45 million in damages for three victims: Marty Bolin, Ronald Sizemore and Rebecca Rogers. Bolin and Sizemore died due to infection caused by the drug swapping, according to court documents.
The lawsuit claims the hospital should have known the high likelihood of drug diversion, and better protected patients from its impact, due to previous incidents at Asante between 2016 and 2017.
Twenty-three parties are now suing the hospital in civil court. The largest complaint includes 18 plaintiffs and seeks $337,785,00 in damages.
Although potential damages from lawsuits are creeping toward half-a-billion dollars, Dr. Ge Bai, professor of accounting at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and an expert in health care finance, said Asante isn’t at the brink of insolvency.
“It will increase their risk, but I think there's no imminent threat for bankruptcy at this point,” said Bai.
She called the potential $488 million payout a “very big financial hit,” but noted the hospital had over $1 billion in revenue last year. And while Asante’s operations have lost money lately, the hospital’s return on investments have made up for the deficit, said Bai.
“As long as they can turn around their operations, given that they have a relatively low level of debt, they should be able to sustain their operations,” she said.
Bai said that hospitals face malpractice suits regularly, but the magnitude of this situation is rare.
The Jackson County District Attorney’s Office charged former nurse Dani Marie Schofield in June with 44 counts of Assault in the 2nd Degree, one count for each alleged victim, related to the alleged drug diversion. All but one party suing in civil court, the estate of Horace Wilson, is named in that criminal indictment. While the charges span July 2022 to July 2023, lawyers suing Asante on behalf of Wilson claim he died of an infection caused by Schofield in Feb. 2022.
Schofield is currently out on a $4 million bail. A pre-trial conference for her criminal charges is scheduled for Dec. 30. She faces a minimum sentence of 70 months for each charge of assault.
