A seven month long police investigation was started after Asante officials contacted the Medford Police Department in early December 2023, regarding investigation into drug diversion allegations that affected patient health at Asante Rogue Regional Hospital in Medford.
According to the Thursday afternoon press release, Asante Rogue Regional Hospital in Medford, had become concerned with a rising number of central line infection cases in patients while in their care.
After an internal investigation, including consultation with outside medical experts, Asante provided the Medford Police Departmen with information that all of the identified cases were isolated to patients in the Intensive Care Unit and occurred within a specific date range.
Based on records and interviews, investigators were able to determine that an ICU nurse, identified as 36 year old Dani Marie Schofield, had access to each of these victims and there was concern that Schofield had been diverting patients’ liquid fentanyl for her personal use and then replacing it with tap water, causing serious infections before leaving Asante in July of 2023.
Investigators spent months pouring through volumes of hospital records and interviewed nearly 100 people in this case to include doctors, nurses, patients and many of those affected including Medford Police Department Investigators making contact with Schofield early on in this investigation.
Due to the magnitude of the case and its impact on victims, multiple full-time detectives from the Medford Police Department were dedicated to the investigation, and once finalized, provided their investigation to the Jackson County District Attorney’s office for review.
On June 12th, the District Attorney’s office convened a Grand Jury to review this case which issued a true bill to indict Schofield on 44 counts of Assault in the 2nd Degree, under Measure 11. 36 year old Dani Marie Schofield was arrested early Thursday afternoon, June 13th, at about 12:30pm.
The multiple Assault in the 2nd Degree charges result from the evidence that indicates that Schofield’s actions resulted in injury to impacted patients. A person commits Assault in the 2nd Degree if the person intentionally or knowingly causes serious physical injury to another. The 44 charges reflect the total amount of patients that this investigation revealed to have been affected by Schofield’s criminal actions.
Through the investigation, detectives were able to narrow the dates of those known infections to between July 2022 and July 2023, and has shown that these infections occurred only in the ICU.
After review of hospital records, patient records and pathology reports, the Medford Police Department consulted with multiple medical experts, who each agreed that questionable deaths associated with this case could not be directly attributed to the infections.
