HOUSTON – A Houston Methodist nurse has been arrested after she was accused of repeatedly stealing drugs from a hospital and swapping them out with saline earlier this year.
According to court documents, Alexis Joann McNeilly, 25, has been charged with three felony counts of Diversion of Controlled Substance.
McNeilly is being charged for the incidents that authorities said took place in the Texas Medical Center from April 2023 to May 2023.
A law enforcement officer said they were made aware by the Director of Pharmacy at Houston Methodist about several syringes and vials that, during his routine inventory check, appeared to have been tampered with in the nurses’ station’s automatic dispensing cabinet.
Upon further investigation, court records show McNeilly had access to these syringes and had drawn up some Hydromorphone and Fentanyl before replacing the drugs with normal saline solution and putting the tampered vials and syringes back into the cabinet.
“On April 20, 2023, at 07:13 hours, (McNeilly) went to the M8N_NE Pyxis and overrode a transaction. (The) affiant observed (McNeilly) selecting hydromorphone and removing the substance from the vial with a syringe. (McNeilly) also selected saline and removed the substance with a syringe. (McNeilly) then filled the empty hydromorphone with the saline solution. (McNeilly) was observed on video surveillance 11 times total between the dates of April 20, 2023, and May 10, 2023, adulterating hydromorphone with saline.”
On April 24 and 25, and again on May 5, she’s accused of doing the same thing with the saline and a vial of Fentanyl. Court records show that on one of those days, McNeilly was caught on surveillance injecting herself in the hand with a Fentanyl syringe before returning to work.
The pharmacy manager of the hospital stated McNeilly was overriding their automatic drug dispensing system and accessing medicine that was not prescribed to her or her patients by a pharmacist.
“The adulterated medicine, now back in circulation, then had the potential to be administered by other medical professionals to patients, unaware that the medicine had been tampered with,” the court documents stated.
When confronted with the video evidence on May 15, McNeilly admitted to gaining access to the drugs but said she threw them away. She was then asked why she took the medications to which she responded, “I hear voices telling me to do it.”
She ultimately denied taking the drugs at work despite investigators saying that they noticed visible bruises on her arms.
After the evidence was gathered, McNeilly was fired immediately from Houston Methodist Hospital.
The hospital shared the following statement with KPRC 2: “This employee’s conduct was unacceptable and never tolerated at Houston Methodist. The employee was fired immediately and law enforcement was notified. We have extensive safeguards in place to protect our patients.”
McNeilly was arrested on Dec. 26 and has since been released on a $30,000 bond, $10,000 for each charge.
She is expected to be back in court on Jan. 2, 2024.
This is not the first time McNeilly has been questioned about her drug usage at her place of employment
Back in 2022, McNeilly was employed by Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, court records show. Her former employer stated that she was terminated after they were made aware by other nurses that McNeilly was creating several suspicious overrides in their drug dispensing system.
One nurse reported entering a staff bathroom after McNeilly and claimed to have immediately noticed “blood spray” on the toilet seat, floor, and wall of the restroom. That nurse told her supervisor what she had seen, which started an investigation.
During the investigation, the supervisor reportedly discovered a bloody syringe and empty vials of Hydromorphone, Morphine sulfate, Promethazine, and Dilaudid in the trash can.
The supervisor said that she had then observed McNeilly leaving the staff bathroom, taking saline flushes and syringes out of her pocket and putting them in her personal bag.
When confronted in this instance, McNeilly admitted to taking the meds but said that they were to be wasted from the canceled overrides. She went on to express that she was under extreme personal stress and that she took the medication to help her deal with her anxiety.
She was given a drug test which came back positive for Morphine, Hydromorphone, and Marijuana.