ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) — Anchorage Advanced Nurse Practitioner Kris Rhodes Kile, 52, was arraigned at the Nesbitt Courthouse Wednesday for manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in connection to the March, 2015 death of 22-year-old Courtney Jones.
Kile is also charged with 16 counts of felony drug distribution related to her alleged prescription practices between 2016 and 2018.
In court Wednesday, Kile pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.
Members of Jones’ family addressed the court during the initial bail hearing.
“Our family’s position has been the same since this started, that this was a criminal act based on negligence, of someone who enjoyed their line of work so much that they called these things that they were giving to the community to help ‘candy'” the victim’s brother said. “A lot of parents all over Alaska, all over the country, are suffering from people just like the person sitting in front of you.”
Kile and 60-year-old Kathryn Leanne Herman were indicted for manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide last Friday, in connection to Jones’ 2015 death.
Kile was also charged with 16 felony counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance for her alleged prescription practices, including allegations that she “conducted her practice to a substantial extent through social media platforms, like Facebook messaging” according to charging documents.
Herman has not yet been arrested.
According to the prosecution’s bail memorandum, a review of eight patient prescription histories “revealed shockingly excessive levels of opioid prescription.”
Prosecutors allege that Kile grossly exceeded prescription levels based on a standard measure in medical practice of “morphine milligram equivalents” (MME) per day in several cases.
MME allows for the conversion of different pain medications with differing potency to a uniform standard, and Centers for Disease Control guidance prescribes “extra precautions” — increased frequency of pain assessments, conversations with patients about reducing narcotic usage — for levels above 50 MME per day.
CDC guidance further warns that professionals “avoid or carefully justify” MME levels in excess of 90 MME per day due to the increased risk of overdose.
An investigation into Kile’s prescribing practices found that she had prescribed one patient opioids at levels approaching 1,400 MME per day between 2016 and 2018.
Another patient’s prescription levels reportedly averaged around 900 MME per day, peaking at just under 1,800 MME per day.
The investigation documents numerous anomalies in both prescription levels and record keeping, including the use of Facebook and e-mail to arrange prescription refills and medication changes, and a pattern of “persistent and pervasive omissions of critical prescription and patient history data from formal medical charts.”
In the case of one patient, treated from 2015 through late 2018, investigators document a January, 2017 incident in which the wife of a patient Kile was treating contacted Kile via Facebook to inform her that her husband was overdosing.
“Kile did not document the 2017 overdose report in this patient’s medical records,” the prosecution’s bail memorandum reads. “Rather, less than two weeks after the overdose report, Kile changed the prescription and prescribed this patient a new opioid medication, meperidine, with no face-to-face office visit.”
Prosecutors say Kile made no note of the new medication or of the overdose in the patient’s medical chart or notes.
When asked about the incident in 2019, prosecutors say Kile claimed to have no recollection of the overdose event.
The terms of Kile’s $200,000 bail prohibit out of state travel, require her to surrender her passport, agree to an extradition waiver, and bar her from practicing nursing, patient care, pharmaceutical work, or medicine of any kind while the case is pending.
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