Florida Health News

Nurse kept working after Army revoked privileges, records show

 By Carol Gentry, editor
3/21/2008 © Florida Health News

A nurse anesthetist recently arrested in Miami was able to continue moving from one job to another for two years after the U.S. Army revoked his practice privileges in 2006 in connection with the infection of 15 patients with Hepatitis C, according to official records released Thursday by the state of Texas.

Jon Dale Jones, 45, was able to get a Florida nursing license last August despite having his practice privileges revoked in March 2006 action by the Army and despite being found to be addicted to drugs in November 2006 while working at Georgetown University Hospital, the records show.

The Texas Board of Nursing released the records of the Jones saga in the wake of filing formal charges against him on Monday, 3 ½ years after the patients became infected at Beaumont Army Medical Center in El Paso. The Texas State Department of Health Services said last week that its epidemiologists sent a warning to the nursing board about Jones in June 2005.

The Jones case raises questions about how well the alarm about suspect health practitioners is sounded between agencies within a state, from state to state, and between the public and private sectors. Neither the Army nor the Texas Board of Nursing has responded to Florida Health News’ requests made a week ago for explanations of why nothing was done to prevent Jones from continuing to practice. 

Jones was arrested March 6 at his home in Miami on federal charges of assaulting three patients in 2004 and illegally acquiring a controlled substance, the strong painkiller fentanyl. Jones' attorney, Ed O’Donnell, told the Miami Herald last week that his client “absolutely” maintains he is innocent of wrongdoing in the infection of the patients in Texas.

The Miami Herald reported last week that Jones had been working through a nursing agency at the University of Miami Hospital for about a month, and that the hospital was reviewing records of his patient encounters there.

Hepatitis C, transmitted through blood, is a potentially fatal disease that attacks the liver. In civil lawsuits filed in Texas by patients who were infected there, Jones is accused of using the same needles to inject painkillers into himself and the patients.

The charges filed this week in Texas say that:

• Jones’ privileges as a nurse anesthetist were revoked on March 9, 2006, by the US Army Medical Command at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, for “substandard or inadequate care” in relation to the cluster of 15 patient infections linked to Jones at the Beaumont hospital in El Paso. The decision was upheld by the Surgeon General of the Army, the documents say. 
• While working at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC, on Nov. 11, 2006, Jones was determined to be “chemically dependent” and was referred to counseling. 
• He worked at an unidentified facility in Newport News, Va., between July and October 2007. 
• Jones failed to cooperate with an investigation by the Texas Board of Nursing Dec. 14, 2007, through March 13.

Following his arrest by the FBI, Jones was released on a $200,000 bond, co-signed by his wife on condition that he not work as a nurse anesthetist and stay away from narcotics, according to the Herald.