FREE SELF-ASSESSMENT · CDC & CSTE ALIGNED

Diversion Prevention Program Assessment

Evaluate, strengthen, and document your controlled substance diversion prevention program — from checklist assessments to investigation guides.

Free · No signup · Auto-save + PDF export

Hospital Assessment
81/100
  • Governance
  • Lifecycle controls
  • Surveillance
  • Waste documentation
  • 2 gaps to review
63-item hospital assessment
3 practice settings
100% free · no signup
ASHP & CDC aligned

WHY IT MATTERS

What Is Drug Diversion & Why It Matters
Patient Safety

Diverted injectable drugs have caused hepatitis B/C and HIV outbreaks in healthcare settings. Impaired providers endanger patients and erode care quality (CDC).

Documented Outbreaks

CDC recorded outbreaks from 1983–2018: 45 HCV infections (NH/KS/MD, 2012), 45 cases (TX, 1992), 25 cases (MN, 2011), 18 HCV (CO, 2009).

Substantially Underreported

Diversion is substantially underestimated and underreported across U.S. healthcare facilities — most incidents never surface through formal channels.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR

Early Warning Signs (CSTE Behavioral Patterns)
  • Unscheduled absences or arriving and leaving at unusual hours
  • Frequent unexplained disappearances from the worksite
  • Insisting on personally administering injectable medications
  • Abnormal waste patterns — excessive, incomplete, or unwitnessed waste documentation
  • Volunteering for overtime, particularly near shift-end when oversight is reduced
See Full Investigation Playbook →

CAPABILITIES

What You Can Do
Run a self-assessment

Hospital, community, or multi-system with per-site scoring

Track scores over time

Real-time scoring with auto-save and CSV export

Export to PDF

Download checklist results as PDF for reporting

Run an investigation

Use the playbook, interview guide, and filing guide

HOW IT WORKS

Five stages, and the control that stops each one
Process diagram of the five stages of a drug diversion case — access, removal, detection, reporting and consequence — each paired with the control that catches it.

Diversion rarely fails at one dramatic moment. It is a sequence — legitimate access, small removals over time, a count that stops reconciling, an internal investigation, a consequence — and each stage has a control that either holds or does not.

The controls listed are the ones the registry's own case records describe. Where those records show the control failed, that is the finding worth acting on.

Investigation playbook →

LATEST CASE STORY

Latest Case Study: What Diversion Looks Like Now
Explore the diversion data Every documented case by year, drug, setting and outcome — plus an interactive map of cases by state. Charts & map →

FOR TEAMS EVALUATING TOOLING

Comparing drug diversion monitoring software?

Before you sit through a vendor demo, read our plain-language breakdown of what ADC analytics, EHR transaction surveillance, reconciliation, and anomaly-detection tools actually do — the mechanism behind each, what the data can and can't prove, and the questions worth asking before you sign.

TOOLS & COMMUNITY

Compliance Tools & Calculators

DEA 106 deadline, discrepancy, waste %, fentanyl reconciliation, biennial inventory.

Community & Directory

Discussion forum, events & conferences, vendor & association directory.

FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Drug diversion occurs when a medication is taken for use by someone other than the patient it was prescribed for, or for an indication other than prescribed. In healthcare settings, it includes staff tampering with, substituting, or stealing controlled substances intended for patients.

Use DivertGuard's free self-assessment checklist — 8 sections covering 63 items across governance, lifecycle controls, surveillance, security, and more. Each item is weighted by impact and you receive a real-time composite score. Start the hospital checklist.

Key behavioral patterns (CSTE toolkit) include: unscheduled absences, frequent disappearances from the worksite, insisting on personally administering injectable medications, abnormal or unwitnessed waste documentation, and volunteering for overtime near the end of shifts.

DEA Form 106 must be filed when there is a theft or significant loss of controlled substances. Filing is required regardless of whether the loss is confirmed theft or unexplained. See the DEA 106 Filing Guide for thresholds, step-by-step instructions, and sample scenarios.
About the Author

Alex Rodriguez, MHIIM, CPhT, is a drug diversion prevention program manager with more than 10 years of pharmacy experience spanning retail, hospice, compounding, home-health, and hospital settings. He has collaborated with hospitals, health systems, community pharmacies, and academic medical centers to design and strengthen controlled substance diversion surveillance programs. DivertGuard grew out of that hands-on work and the gaps he found in freely available guidance.

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