NEW HAVEN, Conn. — On Tuesday, a now-former nurse from Oxford, who worked for the Yale Fertility Center, pleaded guilty to stealing fentanyl from the practice for her own use. Her actions impacted clinic patients, whose attorney wants answers.
49-year-old Donna Monticone, of Oxford, now faces up to 10 years in prison. As part of her responsibilities with the Yale Fertility Center, she ordered and inventoried a variety of narcotics used in outpatient surgeries to anesthetize patients.
"The fentanyl was supposed to be being used for pain relief during fertilization procedures," said attorney Josh Koskoff, who is representing roughly two dozen patients left in excruciating pain because they actually received no anesthesia.
Monticone pleaded guilty to stealing dozens of vials of fentanyl for her own use and admitted to refilling them with a saline solution, which doctors' then unknowingly injected patients with.
"The procedure that requires fentanyl is extremely painful and so without it these women were subject to in some cases extreme and unrelenting pain and were made to believe by the facilities that were run by Yale and part of Yale that that pain was essentially in their head," Koskoff said.
Monticone admitted she initially injected herself with the fentanyl while working at the Yale clinic and eventually began taking the vials home. But Yale had no clue for months.
"One of the ways in which hospitals at least hospital facilities are supposed to deal with this is by limiting those with access to these medication by ensuring that there is strict accounting for when the medications are used," Koskoff said.
Yale says changes are underway in procedures, recordkeeping, and physical storage that will prevent this type of activity from happening again. But, the women attorney Koskoff represents still has plenty of unanswered questions.
"How did they find out is one question and why didn’t they find out sooner is another question," Koskoff said.
A lawsuit has not yet been filed on behalf of the former patients. Monticone's attorney, a federal public defender, declined comment. She is due to be sentenced in May.