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Former employee charged with stealing drugs from hospital

Healthcare Security Weekly, November 12, 2007

For a year and a half, a former hospital employee who dressed in scrubs, returned to the facility where he once worked and stole drugs from bio-waste bins to feed his drug habit.

Lee Gilbert, 25, who once worked as a radiology technician at Lancaster General Hospital in Pennsylvania, was fired for performance reasons in 2005, reported WHP CBS 21 in Harrisburg. But investigators say that didn't stop him from going back to the hospital even without an ID badge and stealing drugs.

The attorney general's office began a month-long investigation at both Lancaster General and Heart of Lancaster hospitals-facilities where Gilbert once worked-after empty drug vials were found in employee restrooms. Gilbert told police he would go back to Lancaster General dressed in scrubs and tell hospital staff he forgot his ID badge. He would then take leftover fentanyl from bio-waste bins and inject it in employee bathrooms and then stash the empty vials in the ceiling.

Police found 300 empty vials in the ceiling at Lancaster General and 60 at Heart of Lancaster, the TV station reported. Attorney General Tom Corbett told the news station has had never seen a case like this and that other hospitals should review their own security measures.

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