The man who caused last summer's hepatitis outbreak is going to prison. Tomorrow, David Kwiatkowski is due to plead guilty in Concord, New Hampshire to infecting more than 40 people in three states with hepatitis C.
Under an agreement filed Monday in U.S. District Court, David Kwiatkowski will serve 30 to 40 years in prison after he pleads guilty to seven counts of tampering with a consumer product and seven counts of obtaining controlled substances by fraud.
Kwiatkowski, formerly of Exeter, was labeled a "serial infector" by prosecutors after he allegedly infected 32 former patients at Exeter Hospital through drug diversion.
More than a dozen patients infected in Kansas and Maryland were also linked to Kwiatkowski when he worked at hospitals there, according to prosecutors.
This story makes for horrifying reading. In the plea deal, Kwiatkowski admitted to stealing syringes of fetanyl from patients intended for surgery and injecting himself with it. He then replaced the fetanyl with saline before replacing them. Thus, patients who thought they were getting a painkiller were instead getting saline tainted with Kwiatkowski's infected blood. He also admitted to infecting six people at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore and Hays Medical Center in Hays, Kansas. Additionally, he admitted to
diverting drugs in a similar manner in Georgia and Kansas.
Kwiatkowski was staring down the barrel of as many as 98 years in prison had he not taken the plea deal. However, if the deal is accepted, federal charges pending against him in Kansas, Maryland and Georgia will be dropped. I have to hope he gets closer to 40 years, however. He openly admitted to investigators that he knew he was going to "kill a lot of people out of this."
The filing reveals that Exeter and several of Kwiatkowski's other employers missed a lot of red flags. He'd been fired or been forced to resign numerous times over the last decade for suspicious behavior.
Kwiatkowski was employed at several health care facilities in Michigan between 2003 and 2007. He was fired from a St. Joseph Mercy Health System in 2004 after testing positive for controlled drugs, the plea agreement said. He was fired from William Beaumont Hospital in 2004 for "gross misconduct" and he resigned from a position at the University of Michigan Hospital in 2006 during an investigation into missing drugs, including fentanyl.
Kwiatkowski resigned from a position at Michigan's Oakwood Annapolis Hospital after he was suspended pending an investigation of potential controlled substance abuse, according to the plea deal.
[snip]
In May 2008, Kwiatkowski was terminated from a placement at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center after he was caught diverting the drug fentanyl. But less than two weeks later, he got a job at the VA Medical Center in Maryland where he worked until November 2008.
He worked at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Maryland between July 2009 and January 2010, during which time at least six patients became infected with his strain of hepatitis C, according to the plea agreement.
Kwiatkowski moved on to the Arizona Heart Hospital in March 2010 but was let go after he was found unresponsive in a restroom just a month later. A needle and syringe labeled "fentanyl" were seen by witnesses floating in a toilet. Drug testing showed he had marijuana and cocaine in his system, according to the agreement.
At the time this broke, the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists came under well-deserved fire for not red-flagging Kwiatkowski after the Arizona incident. The AART issued
a statement saying that it took no action because no criminal charges were filed there, and there was no indication at the time that he had hepatitis. Still, one has to wonder how his previous employers didn't notice that he'd been fired several times for drug-related misconduct.