A nurse from Cape Cod was charged on Friday with siphoning away oxycodone pills from an East Boston healthcare facility, per Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden's announcement. The nurse, Kaitlin Tipton, 34, of West Yarmouth, faced charges of drug larceny and obtaining drugs by fraud at the East Boston BMC, as reported by the Suffolk District Attorney's press release.
Judge Debra DelVecchio released Tipton on personal recognizance, ordering her, while having been released on personal recognizance, to steer clear from the facility where the alleged pilfering took place. Tipton is slated to return to court come September 10 for a probable cause hearing.
According to the investigation led by a state trooper with Massachusetts’ Drug Control Program, Tipton is accused of diverting over 50 pills intended for pain relief from November 15, 2023, to February 23, 2024, at Advocate Health Care (AHC). AHC, the long-term care and short-term rehabilitation facility where Tipton's employment as an LPN was held, became the scene of where she allegedly doctored drug logs and medical records to conceal the theft.
Investigators uncovered that the medication, earmarked for those contending with pain, was taken by Tipton by either failing to record doses, extracting more medication than the doctors ordered, or inserting false entries on days when she was not recorded as working. In her discussion with law enforcement, Tipton admitted to diverting pills to aid a friend with a back ailment, but she couldn't recount the exact number of times this occurred. "We'll likely never know where these pills ended up, but we do know that substances like oxycodone and oxycontin are huge contributors to dependency issues we see in Boston and every other community. So diversions from dispensing facilities must be taken seriously," Hayden said, as conveyed in the statement.
