Hospital episode suggests need for tighter drug abuse monitoring. (Hospitals).

Patient infections likely caused by a drug-abusing employee point to the need for careful monitoring procedures and drug testing in the healthcare arena, according to recent findings by epidemiologists and laboratory experts.

Complicated scientific sleuthing enabled the researchers to identify the likely reason that 26 patients in a hospital surgical intensive care unit contracted blood stream infections from June 1998 to March 1999.

"Hospital-acquired infections are not uncommon, but it was unusual to see so many infections of this particular type in an iso