This is a news article about fentanyl overdoses. In the event of an actual overdose, stop reading, call 911, and seek immediate medical assistance.
Part IV of a 4-part series.
Information Requested But Denied
We have made a series of FOIL requests to the New Rochelle Police Department, New Rochelle Fire Department and Empress Ambulance. We have not made a FOIL request to the New Rochelle Board of Education because we do not trust them to provide records, and given our past experience, they will deny records under FERPA and HIPAA privacy laws. In the past, we have obtained such records, but only as a result of a lawsuit by a plaintiff suing the District. We can wait.
New Rochelle High School has CCTV cameras throughout the building integrated with facial recognition software, so security staff can track any employee or student on every video camera in the building (or any other person whose image is in their database).
Using the CCTV system, security officers can see exactly when the student took a hit from a vape pen, if anyone else did the same, who had possession of the vape pen and their movements throughout the build for the rest of the day.
The nurses are supposed to keep a detailed log of their interactions with a patient. Those logs should have a time-stamped record of when the student arrived at the nurses’ office, what the student said, and the clinical assessment by the nurses (i.e., mental status, respiratory rate, pupil size, heart rate, etc.).
The ambulance run sheet should have the clinical assessment of paramedics (i.e., mental status, respiratory rate, pupil size, etc.) and reference a Registered Nurse’s clinical assessment that led them to use Narcan (naloxone)
Westchester Medical Center Drug Testing
We contacted Westchester Medical Center to ask about fentanyl overdoses and toxicology screening for fentanyl.
We asked them a series of questions about whether they had a chemical analyzer and the FDA-cleared substances that can be used in chemical analyzers to identify fentanyl in a blood or urine sample — a capability found even in small and/or rural hospitals.
- Does Westchester Medical Center can measure the presence of fentanyl in patients in real-time or quickly (within an hour)?
- Is fentanyl screening done as part of routine drug toxicological testing at Westchester Medical Center?
- Is fentanyl screening done for a patient who indicates possible fentanyl use/exposure at Westchester Medical Center?
- How is drug toxicological testing done at Westchester Medical Center for fentanyl? (Urine, Blood, Other?)
- How long does it typically take at Westchester Medical Center to get test results when screening for fentanyl?
After a week, a Westchester Medical Center spokesperson issued a statement:
Our standard screening tests for opiates via urine analysis. However, the screening does not specify which opiate is detected. In emergency medicine, the focus is on immediate care with referral for additional treatment, as necessary.
We followed up, pointing out that we asked about fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, but the statement is about opiates, poppy-based opioids that do not include fentanyl, and so not responsive to any of our questions which are only about fentanyl.
They did not respond further, so we are left to conclude that they do not test for opioids on a routine toxicology screen and do not want to address any questions about fentanyl.
Useful Links:
CDC Fact Sheet on Urine Drug Testing
LabCorp: Fentanyl/Norfentanyl, Screen and Confirmation, Urine
Hospitals don’t routinely test for fentanyl — it’s time to add to the ‘federal five’
THC Overdose: Has First Death From Marijuana (THC Oil) Exposure Been Recorded in the United States?
Preventing Opioid Overdose with Naloxone (video)
Two SROs and a nurse exposed to fentanyl from vape pen at Sequoyah High School
