Former nurse still works in healthcare after years of stealing opioids from patients

All the details in our Health Safety stories come from publicly available Final Orders, Consent Orders, Orders of Suspension and other documents from the Virginia Department of Health Professionals. For more information, see the Editor’s note below the story.

The first time Mary Katherine Story-Haulton was caught pilfering drugs from a medical facility was in 2001. She was working as a nurse at Petersburg’s Southside Regional Medical Center (SRMC) when she took hydrocodone tablets and injectable morphine from the hospital’s supplies. Haulton was reported to the Board of Nursing and her nursing license was suspended.

To get it reinstated, she agreed to sign up for a Recovery Monitoring Contract with the Health Practitioners’ Program (HPIP). An alternative to disciplinary action, the program refers healthcare workers to ongoing, monitored addiction treatment and makes sure they're taking continuous steps towards recovery. Haulton was initially unable to keep up with the program and stopped communicating with the HPIP in late 2006. She eventually got back on track, however, and completed the program in 2011. Her license was reinstated.

A few years passed without incident. Haulton bounced around different hospitals, hospices and healthcare facilities. She was back at Petersburg’s SRMC when she was again caught taking opioids meant for her patients. This time, she was also falsifying records to cover it up.

In December 2015, a nurse saw Haulton slip a syringe of morphine she said she’d given a patient into her pocket. When hospital administration confronted her, the syringe was still in Haulton’s pocket. It was one of several syringes of morphine, among other opioids, that she would take that day and in the following weeks. Again, Haulton was fired. Again, she bounced around between medical jobs in the following months.

Haulton landed in Mechanicsville-based Autumn Care, a branch of AsceraCare Hospice, in 2017. She was working there as a hospice nurse when she switched out an opioid pill meant for a hospice patient complaining of pain with an anti-anxiety pill. She was spotted with the hospital’s medication cart. She took it upon herself to organize patients’ medication even though it was not in her job description. She started to show up to work sleepy, disheveled, with slurred speech and unable to follow simple direction. It wasn’t long before she was out of a job again.

In her applications to new jobs, Haulton lied about being fired from at least two hospitals—in one case saying she’d left a job because it was "an unsafe environment." Her falsified resume landed her two jobs. She lost the first a handful of months after she was hired, but has kept the second—a supervisor position at Colonial Heights-based Care Advantage, Inc.—since 2018.

It took a few years for the consequences to catch up to Haulton. It wasn’t until 2021 that the Board of Nursing tallied up her code violations and once again suspended her nursing license. But they also, again, gave her the option to get it back if she completed another substance abuse program. At first, Haulton agreed. But in mid-2023, she was dismissed from the program for failure to comply. Her license was suspended indefinitely.

She never completed her new contract with the Health Practitioner’s Monitoring Program. Her license remains inactive. But she continues to work with patients in Colonial Heights to this day.

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To file a formal complaint against a health professional, click here.  For links to the public information informing this story, see below.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: When citizens are a danger to the public safety, law enforcement arrests them and charges them with crimes; they have the opportunity to face a jury of their peers; if convicted, they serve time and/or probation that can often ensnare them in the system for years.

When a medical professional is an alleged danger to the public safety, the Virginia Department of Health Professionals handles all facets of the inquiry, including the investigation and penalties. And sometimes, even when a medical professional is found liable of doing harm to patients, they may face a reprimand, pay a fine and continue to practice, without missing a day of work and with little chance for the public to see what they’ve done.

The Health Safety stories in this series tell the facts of cases where medical professionals  endanger our public health safety. They also bring you into the world of the medical board’s consent orders and public final orders, so you can see exactly how the VDHP’s self-policing system works.

LINKS TO DOCUMENTS REFERENCED ABOVE:

Board of NursingLicense Number: 0001137917Name: Mary Haulton

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Virginia nursing license suspended, she still works in healthcare after years of opioid theft