What Happened
A proposed settlement agreement before the Indiana Board of Pharmacy states that a hospital pharmacist serving as pharmacy manager used normally-unused transaction types in the hospital's automated inventory system to remove controlled substances from the CII safe and take personal possession of them between November 2020 and July 2024, using his duty to transfer controlled substances to affiliated outpatient centers as cover.
The agreement states the hospital lacked auditing and comparison procedures that would have detected the discrepancies between amounts recorded as utilized at the outpatient centers and actual patient utilization The hospital reported the suspected loss to the DEA and the Board in July 2024 and disclosed the loss of hydromorphone, methadone and morphine on an amended DEA Form 106 Under the agreement the hospital's pharmacy license and controlled substances registration would be placed on indefinite probation for not less than three years with a $44,000 fine, and criminal charges were filed against the pharmacist in 2025.
What the Record Shows
The hospital's pharmacy license and controlled substances registration were placed on indefinite probation for not less than three years, with quarterly outside audits for the first two years, two unannounced compliance inspections, required diversion-prevention training for pharmacy leadership, and a $44,000 fine; the hospital reported the loss to the DEA and Board in July 2024 and filed an amended DEA Form 106 in November 2024, and in August 2025 the county prosecutor's office filed charges against the pharmacist.
Why It Matters for Diversion Programs
This entry comes from a primary source rather than a federal enforcement release, and it is recorded as reported: Between approximately November 2020 and July 2024, a pharmacist serving as the hospital's pharmacy manager used normally-unused transaction types in the automated inventory management system to remove controlled substances from the CII safe and take personal possession of them, using his duty of stocking controlled substances at affiliated outpatient pain and orthopedic centers as cover. The hospital's controlled-substance tracking policies did not include regular auditing or comparison of patient utilization at those centers, CII Safe Review Sale reports, or All CII Safe Events reports, which allowed the discrepancies to go undetected.. Board and news records are a lagging indicator - by the time a licensing authority or a reporter learns of a diversion, the diversion was normally detected internally first, which makes each entry a signal that inventory reconciliation, waste observation or dispensing oversight failed earlier.