Yale University in the US agreed this week to pay dozens of patients who had filed lawsuits claiming that they had endured excruciatingly painful egg retrieval procedures after a nurse at its fertility clinic secretly swopped their anaesthesia for saline.
The amount of money the institution paid was not disclosed, but the plaintiffs’ lawyers said it was “substantial”. In court filings late last year, they proposed a settlement of roughly $2m for each patient, reports The New York Times.
“This mutual agreement allows both parties to move forward and begin healing,” said Karen Peart, a spokeswoman for Yale.
The 93 patients involved in the settlement were seen at Yale Fertility Centre in 2020. Some of their shocking stories were told in “The Retrievals”, a popular 2023 podcast from Serial Productions and The New York Times.
In the lawsuits, the patients described their egg retrievals – short surgical procedures that typically use fentanyl as an anaesthetic – as intensely painful. Many said they had complained to Yale but were ignored.
Unbeknown to the patients, a nurse with a drug addiction had tampered with most of the clinic’s fentanyl supply, replacing the powerful narcotic with a salt and water solution. A subsequent Yale investigation found that, from June to October 2020, 75% of the fentanyl given to patients was either diluted or completely replaced with saline.
That nurse, Donna Monticone, was sentenced in May 2021 to four weekends of incarceration and three months of house arrest.
In 2022, Yale University paid $308 000 to settle a Department of Justice investigation into whether Yale had failed to keep its fentanyl supply secure. And a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) audit of the facility identified more than 600 discrepancies in its record-keeping for controlled substances like fentanyl and ketamine.
Other healthcare providers have faced similar lawsuits over stolen fentanyl. Last week, the families of 16 patients who died at an Oregon hospital sued the facility for lacking safeguards to prevent a nurse from swopping fentanyl with tap water. The patients died after contracting bacterial infections from the unfiltered water.
The patients’ experiences at Yale gained new attention with The Retrievals. The five-part podcast included accounts from patients who said they had screamed out in pain during the procedures and had complained to their doctors, only to be dismissed.
Joshua Koskoff, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said that a key part of the finalising the settlement was assurances from Yale that the clinic had made changes to prevent similar situations.
“The women in this case were absolutely insistent that there would be no monetary settlement until the university had addressed all of the problems that resulted in this occurring,” he said.
Yale University changed its fertility clinic to have “rigorous processes, procedures, and safeguards in place,” Peart, the spokeswoman, said. Those include additional staff training and a new doctor in charge of the facility.
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
Hospital sued after nurse swops IV fentanyl for water
Fentanyl-class over-prescription puts US patients at high risk
The opioid epidemic and the psychology of addiction
Baby born through new egg freezing fertility treatment