A federal whistleblower lawsuit unsealed this month accuses emergency department nurse Nolan Chismire of stealing patient medications at Heritage Valley Health System and being high while on duty, allegations the complaint says helped lead to at least two deaths. The filing also says hospital leaders were warned for years and did nothing.
The case was brought by Samantha Gallo and Jennifer Duckett, who say they reported the conduct and were ignored. Duckett said she was terminated last year after speaking up, while Gallo remains at Heritage Valley Health System, according to the complaint. The lawsuit names Norm Mitry, Linda Homyk and other supervisors as defendants.
The complaint says Chismire diverted narcotics from patients for at least eight years and falsified medical records to make it appear controlled substances had been prescribed when they had not been. It says he began working at Heritage Valley in 2017, but had already earned his nursing license in 2009 and had a history that included two previous firings and a three-year suspension of his license for stealing drugs.
What gives the lawsuit its force is not just the list of accusations, but the picture it draws of a system that kept letting the same warning signs pass. Nurses, the complaint says, reported Chismire to supervisors and were brushed aside. In one episode, they say they saw him leave the staff bathroom appearing high, then photographed a used orange tourniquet, used injectable needle syringes and empty Valium intravenous vials. The complaint says Homyk chastised the nurses who brought her the photos and ordered them to “stand down.”
The filing goes further, saying Heritage Valley Health System executives, emergency department physicians and nursing supervisors had actual knowledge of Chismire’s conduct for at least eight years and failed to intervene. That claim is central to the whistleblower lawsuit filed under the federal False Claims Act, because it turns the case from one nurse’s alleged drug abuse into a broader accusation of ignored warnings and possible concealment inside the hospital.
The unanswered question now is not whether the allegations are serious. It is what Heritage Valley Health System can show it did, if anything, after each complaint that crossed its desks. Messages left with hospital leadership and Chismire on Tuesday morning were not immediately returned, and the complaint leaves the hospital’s response as the next issue the court will have to sort out.
