Boston Globe (09.26.01) - Thursday, September 27, 2001
The private company that provides medical care to inmates at
the Suffolk County jail said the drug mix-up that sent five
prisoners to the hospital was a "highly unusual" mistake. On
Sunday morning, inmates who were supposed to get a prescribed
amount of Viracept, an anti-viral drug, instead were given
high doses of Elavil, an anti-depressant, by Correctional
Medical Services staff. Three of the five inmates required
hospitalization but by Tuesday two had returned to the Suffolk
County House of Correction, according to Richard Lombardi,
spokesperson for Suffolk County Sheriff Richard J. Rouse.
"We believe it is highly unusual" for inmates to be given the
wrong drug, said Ken Fields, spokesperson for Correctional
Medical Services. "We're reviewing to see if this kind of
situation may have occurred" in the past. "I'm not aware of
any [happening] in the entire state of Massachusetts." But
state Department of Correction spokesperson Justin Latini said
after speaking with the department's medical director that
drug mix-ups have happened in the state prisons, where 5,002
inmates get prescription drugs daily. He said no inmate has
been killed by a drug mix-up.
On Tuesday, the state Department of Public Health (DPH) and
the Suffolk district attorney's office said they are reviewing
the mix-up. The DPH will look at the handling of prescription
drugs, but will not scrutinize the medical issues because the
prison is not licensed by the DPH, said department
spokesperson Roseanne Pawelec. Fields said the company will
change procedures if deemed necessary following its
investigation. "We will carefully evaluate what happened and
try to take steps to prevent it from occurring in the future,"
he said.