By Russ Nix, Consulting Associate Director, Wolters Kluwer Health
LinkedIn: Russ Nix
LinkedIn: Wolters Kluwer
Drug diversion, when a healthcare worker diverts medication and misuses it, remains a longstanding challenge within healthcare. Each year, around 37,000 incidents occur across healthcare facilities. These events can create significant risks for healthcare organizations on both an operational and patient safety level, often leading to preventable incidents of harm such as unnecessary procedures and infection outbreaks.
Beyond recognizing the operational and safety risks, healthcare teams must also acknowledge the emotional reality of diversion. While often viewed through a compliance or security lens, drug diversion is also, at its core, a human challenge that requires a human-centered response. Each case of diversion involves a real person dealing with significant pressures and personal struggles, highlighting the need for as much empathy as professional oversight.
As hospitals and health systems work to strengthen their diversion prevention programs, technology can play a transformative role, not by replacing human judgment, but by reinforcing it. The right technology provides a reliable foundation that allows diversion teams to approach their roles with empathy, transparency, and accountability.
Today’s Regulatory Reality (And Why It Matters)
Federal focus on drug diversion has intensified in recent years. This year, for example, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) launched a joint initiative with the Department of Justice (DOJ) titled Operation Profit over Patient, which aims to reduce healthcare fraud and the diversion of controlled substances. The project signals a shift toward more proactive regulatory measures, indicating that more consistent and frequent inspections are on the horizon. Inspections are no longer a question of if, but when.
As regulatory scrutiny increases, hospitals and health systems now face the dual challenge of ensuring compliance while also building and maintaining a culture around prevention based on compassion. Meeting inspection standards is now more crucial than ever, but so is understanding the human factors behind diversion that can lead to incidents.
Common Pitfalls That Undermine Prevention Efforts
Before looking at how technology can drive diversion prevention, it’s important to understand the common challenge that may impact a prevention program’s effectiveness. Common pitfalls can include:
- Lapses in security, such as unsecured workstations or weak access controls.
- Gaps in recordkeeping such as missing records, outdated registrations, or incomplete documentation. (Remember, if it’s not documented, it didn’t happen).
- Delays in incident reporting. The DEA mandates that significant losses should be reported within one business day, meaning delays can indicate noncompliance.
- Ineffective training to the point where staff may not be able to properly explain reporting processes or spot patterns or signs of diversion.
Understanding these challenges is the first step. The next is understanding how technology can help address them, enabling diversion teams to focus more on human connection.
How Technology Serves as the Foundation for Effective Prevention
When it comes to drug diversion prevention, technology serves as the connective tissue that unites compassion with compliance. By removing complexity and bringing clarity to daily workflows, technology helps transform prevention from a reactive task into a proactive, teamwide effort. When data is accessible and compliance is seamlessly woven into everyday processes, drug diversion prevention becomes not only easier, but more sustainable.
Research indicates that while many hospitals have deployed strategies to prevent diversion, actual follow-through and monitoring vary, making enhanced monitoring, auditing, and training essential to strengthening diversion prevention efforts. And in a domain in which early detection is critical, data provides both an early warning and a foundation for accountability and continuous improvement.
Monitoring software enables visibility into concerning waste trends or patterns of unusual behavior, resulting in less time to discovery of an incident and providing key insights in actionable dashboards that otherwise may have only been identified through a robust post-incident audit. Automated reporting also reduces the hours spent manually reconciling records or chasing documentation, freeing diversion teams to focus on the human side of prevention. That means more time for conducting empathetic and thorough investigative interviews, supporting staff who may be struggling, and building a culture of proactivity that encourages early intervention before harm occurs.
Advanced analytics also empower diversion prevention teams to maintain more accurate, complete medication inventory records, enabling more thorough documentation for inspections and investigations. Artificial intelligence (AI) can also help uncover otherwise hidden workflow inefficiencies, allowing healthcare organizations to refine policies, tailor training, and improve processes based on data-backed insights.
Making Diversion Prevention More Human
An effective drug diversion program isn’t built on fear or enforcement, but trust, empathy, and shared responsibility. Diversion detection and monitoring technology brings objectivity and visibility to what can be considered a deeply human challenge. By unlocking the right insights, technology enables hospitals and health systems to act quicker, adjust their training and policies accordingly, and most importantly, frees up more time for staff to dedicate more attention to the real people behind the diversion data.