A Maine nurse has lost her right to practice in New Hampshire after being charged with diverting narcotics from Concord Hospital.
Kerry Bridges of Warren, Maine, was arrested June 12 and charged with three counts of possession of a controlled drug, which is a felony, according to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.
Bridges is accused of diverting Dilaudid and morphine.
Bridges was working at the hospital in May when the hospital reported that she allegedly diverted controlled drugs, documented administration of narcotics without a doctor’s orders and had missing or unaccounted for narcotics, the attorney general’s office said. Bridges worked as a traveling nurse at the hospital from March 27 to May 1 as part of the Nurse Licensure Compact. Her privilege to practice in New Hampshire was suspended May 22.
The case was investigated by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.
Bridges, who has had her Maine nursing license since 1998, was reprimanded by the Maine State Board of Nursing in 2012 after she was accused of similar conduct while working at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.
The hospital said she resigned her position during the facility’s investigation of many instances of removing narcotics from supplies without a doctor’s orders.
Bridges initially denied that she had diverted narcotics and offered to take a drug test and share six months worth of her military drug screens, but eventually signed a consent agreement with the nursing board admitting that her documentation of the administration of drugs was substandard.
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