Yale Settles Fertility Clinics Patients Claims Over Diverted Fentanyl

(Reuters) – Yale University reached a settlement with 95 patients of its fertility clinic who underwent treatments without pain relief because a nurse diverted fentanyl for her own use, lawyers for the plaintiffs announced on Monday.

The settlement, whose terms were not disclosed, covers 154 total plaintiffs, some of whom are patients’ partners, who had accused Yale’s Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility clinic in Orange, Connecticut, of maintaining a shoddy system for monitoring controlled substances in a series of lawsuits. As a result, they said, one nurse was able to systematically swap out the painkiller fentanyl with saline solution.

Yale agreed to pay “substantial damages,” the lawyers said, without disclosing the amount.

The university in a statement said that it had adopted new measures to prevent diversion in the future, including more staff training and supervision.

“We will continue to do everything we can to ensure our patients and staff feel heard and that we have the strongest protections in place for them,” it said.

Plaintiffs said that Yale initially ignored numerous complaints from patients about excruciating pain during egg retrieval procedures for in vitro fertilization, and acknowledged a problem only when an employee noticed a loose cap on a fentanyl vial.

“Our clients walked into this clinic during the most vulnerable time of their lives expecting their medical providers to listen to and believe them,” said Kelly Fitzpatrick of the law firm Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, a lawyer for the plaintiffs. “Instead, their complaints of agonizing pain were repeatedly dismissed, and they were gaslit.”

The diversion was ultimately revealed through a criminal investigation, which resulted in the nurse’s 2021 guilty plea to one count of tampering with a consumer product. Investigators said that about 75% of fentanyl given to patients from June to October 2020 was adulterated with saline, though plaintiffs in the lawsuits say the diversion took place over a longer period.

Egg retrieval is an invasive procedure that is normally done with painkillers.

The nurse, Donna Monticone, was sentenced to three months of home confinement.

The case received national attention through a 2023 series on the New York Times’ Serial podcast.

(Reporting in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Aurora Ellis)