State sues South Jersey hospitals for discrimination against pregnant patients undergoing drug tests • New Jersey Monitor

State officials sued Virtua Health and its hospitals in Voorhees, Mount Holly and Camden on Thursday, accusing the health system of discriminating against pregnant patients by subjecting them to mandatory drug tests without informed consent.

Virtua has secretly drug tested all pregnant patients admitted to its maternity or high-risk obstetric units since 2018 and has not subjected any other patients admitted to its hospitals to mandatory drug screening, according to a Complaint filed in state Supreme Court in Camden.

This violates the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination and patient privacy rights, the complaint says. It also contradicts accepted standards of medical care that reject general drug testing of pregnant patients because of, among other things, the risk of false positive results, the lawsuit says.

Attorney General Matt Platkin and Sundeep Iyer, director of the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights in Platkin's office, are listed as plaintiffs in the case.

In a statement, Platkin said the action demonstrates his office's commitment to ensuring that the rights of pregnant people are not undermined.

“Whether it is protecting the right to reproductive freedom or ensuring that a pregnant person does not undergo tests or procedures without their knowledge and consent, we will defend the rights of our residents,” he said.

The lawsuit comes a year and a half after the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey filed it Civil rights complaints v. Virtua and Hackensack University Medical Center on behalf of two women who were unknowingly drug tested after going there to give birth.

Both had eaten poppy seed bagels before going to the hospital, so the tests returned false positive results, prompting hospital staff to alert child welfare authorities, who then monitored each family for months, even though there was no evidence of drug use or other wrongdoing among the women said.

Thursday's lawsuit was sparked by those complaints and concerns one of the complainants, Kaitlin K.who thought she was undergoing a routine test for proteins when Virtua staff in Voorhees tested her urine when she gave birth there in October 2022. The Hackensack complaint is still pending.

American Civil Liberties of New Jersey staff attorney Molly Linhorst represented the women and filed their civil rights complaints last year. She said Platkin's lawsuit sends a clear message that health care providers should not drug test pregnant women without their consent.

“We have heard from dozens of people across the state with similar stories. Many of them – including our client Kaitlin K., whose experience formed the backbone of this new case – were subjected to unnecessary and invasive investigations by the Ministry of Child Protection and Child Protection,” said Linhorst.

Investigators from the state Division of Civil Rights found that while 46 hospitals made referrals to child welfare providers based on perinatal drug testing, Virtua Health's three hospitals accounted for nearly 25% of those in 2021, 2022 and 2023, even though they were only 9.4%. of deliveries in New Jersey, the complaint says.

An investigation by the Department of Child Protection and Permanency may result in parents not being allowed to take their newborns home from hospital, unannounced home visits and interviews with other children in the household and parents fearing their babies could be taken away from them, it says in the complaint.

“No parent should have to fear losing custody of their children because of a single, unreliable and non-consensual test,” Linhorst said.

A Virtua spokesman did not comment on the hospital's drug testing policies, saying only that the health system meets “the highest standards of regulatory compliance.”

“The safety and well-being of every patient, especially our newborns, is our top priority,” said Virtua spokesman Daniel Moise.

Platkin and Iyer want a judge to order Virtua to stop its mandatory general drug testing of pregnant patients, as well as to impose civil penalties on the hospital system and damages for named and unnamed victims.

“Virtua’s practices administer mandatory drug testing to pregnant patients without informed consent,” Iyer said in a statement. “As a result, patients are unnecessarily traumatized and are afraid of losing their children just a few hours after birth. Virtua’s practices violate our civil rights laws and we look forward to proving our case in court.”