Rehab centre gets ‘all clear’ in investigation into Brandon Jansen OD death

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A private Sunshine Coast rehab clinic has been cleared of any wrongdoing after a Coquitlam man getting treatment there died of a fentanyl overdose earlier this year.

But the facility says legislative red tape may have contributed to the man’s death, and his family is disappointed with the findings.

The report by the Community Care Facilities Licensing, a government agency, says Sunshine Coast Health Centre (SCHC) in Powell River didn’t violate the Assisted Living Act in relation to the death of Brandon Jansen on March 7.

SCHC CEO Melanie Jordan, however, says provincial rules preventing facilities from carrying naloxone may have contributed to Jansen’s death.

“We believe staff might have saved Brandon’s life had a higher authority insisted that treatment centres in this province be armed with naloxone in an opioid crisis,” Jordan says.

Jansen had been on Suboxone, a drug that curbs opioid cravings and their effects, prior to arriving at SCHC, but was taken off it because the facility was only in the process of getting a license to administer it. At the time, Jordan says they did not know facilities could get 24 hour exemptions to the restrictions.

“For years we believed widespread use of Suboxone represents one of the best tools to saving lives of people who are at such high risk for accidental death,” Jordan says, adding their licence was approved just days before the province lifted many of the drug’s restrictions.

Jordan says they now prescribe Suboxone to all opioid addiction patients. Naloxone became available without prescription at the end of March.

In the report, RCMP say Jansen likely got the heroin and fentanyl that led to his death from another patient, but another illegal substance, hidden in supplement bottles, was brought in, perhaps unknowingly, by a family member.

Jansen’s mother Michelle says she was the only one to visit her son at the facility and that she did not bring him any supplements.

“It’s devastating. My son died there, the CEO never reached out to me, never offered condolences and never invited me to this (report release) and is now insinuating that I… would have brought him illicit substances,” Michelle says.

Recommendations in the report include training all staff to use naloxone, better observation and checking of patients’ visitors, more security cameras, and relocating the smoking area to a more visible spot.

Other changes that have already been made include more detailed screening and assessment of reuse risk of patients as they enter the facility and a detox unit which is set to open in few weeks.

Jordan says they want to increase security without restricting patient mobility. Currently, the only facilities that can take away the right to freedom of movement are hospital lock wards who receive permission to restrict individual patients.

A coroner’s inquest into Jansen’s death will begin Jan. 16, 2017 and Jordan looks forward to more discussion about the ongoing BC opioid crisis.

“We must talk about how fentanyl has become such a sought after drug and how it continues to draw new users despite the dangers,” she says, adding something must be done now. “(The government’s) systems work very well in general for the province. The conservative nature when it comes to changing the rules usually suits the public very well. But it doesn’t work very well in a crisis. Those slow systems that require people meet before they can make changes, they got in the way of saving lives.”