Drug rehab facilities promise to monitor patients 24/7 to prevent drug use and overdose risk.

But the use of a drug like fentanyl, or even a mix of drugs, can go unnoticed, leaving patients in an overdose reaction that continues far too long. Overdosing patients who aren’t found within minutes can suffer permanent injury, and even die because the response wasn’t quick enough.

Families who lose a loved one can file wrongful death claims to hold negligent staff and facility fully responsible.

Dangerous Overdoses Unchecked by Rehab Centers

Opioids are the most common type of drug that make their way into supposedly locked-down rehab facilities. Fentanyl is the drug of choice. It’s a powerful lab-made opioid. The CDC documented an estimated 48,422 Fentanyl-caused deaths in the U.S. in 2024.

Heroin is another opioid that might be found in treatment centers. It’s derived from morphine, which comes from the poppy plant. Nowadays, it’s almost always combined with an illegally made synthetic opioid, like Fentanyl. The CDC reports that around 5% of all fatal opioid overdoses involve Heroin.

Patients could overdose on cocaine that makes its way into a clinic. It’s classified as a stimulant. The CDC reports that of the overdose deaths between January 2021 and June 2024 across the nation, around 30% involved cocaine.

Polysubstance Overdose. A growing problem inside and outside of clinics is when patients are the victims of a polysubstance overdose. This is the name for an overdose that involves more than one stimulant or drug.

Treatment for a polysubstance overdose can be more challenging for a few reasons:

• More expertise needed to identify the type of overdose involved
• Harder to treat the symptoms when every drug involved isn’t known
• A wider range of health consequences
• A more severe withdrawal period

Signs of Neglect in an Overdose Investigation

Families are justified in demanding answers after a loved one manages to die from an overdose in a “drug-free” clinic.

Unfortunately, drug rehabs and their legal teams can go into defensive mode and fail to offer answers and even conceal evidence of what really happened.

An experienced attorney can always help secure the evidence that’s needed to prove that a tragic overdose could have been prevented.

An attorney who is also a skilled investigator would be looking for these signs that indicate carelessness on the part of a facility staff:

Evidence that an overdosing patient went too long before being discovered

• Monitoring logs (also known as rounding logs) showing how long a patient went without contact from a nurse or staff member
• Evidence that symptoms were ignored, such as drowsiness, labored breathing, weak pulse, lips turning blue, choking.
• Long stretches between patient, bed, and room searches to spot drug contraband
• Records that show a problem was noted, but misdiagnosed, and wasn’t treated as an overdose
• Medication logs showing patients missed important doses, and perhaps were denied NARCAN
• Phone records and 911 records showing that an ambulance wasn’t requested soon enough
• A patient was discharged while showing obvious signs of drug use
• Evidence from an internal report the drug rehab facility conducts

Corporate lawyers can hide these pieces of evidence and make them hard to obtain. A lawyer working for the family can make legal demands to preserve this evidence and force facility owners to turn it over.

See: Why patients in rehab can quickly become less tolerant of drugs.

Rapid Health Issues From Drug Overdoses

Staff members must check on patients frequently to spot the signs of an overdose in time. They must react quickly. This period from overdose to treatment is critical to the survival chances of the patient.

Patients may only have minutes before health consequences become permanent or fatal.

When monitoring and Q15 bedchecks aren’t completed as promised, overdoses go unnoticed. The health consequences can escalate.

Overdose patients can deal with these and other life-threatening health effects before an ambulance arrives:

• Cardiac Arrest
• Coronary Artery Spasm (a sudden tightening of arteries)
• Cerebral Anoxia (all oxygen cut off from the brain)
• Seizures
• Muscle Spasms
• Permanent brain damage
• Choking on vomit and asphyxiation (a threat especially when patients aren’t placed in a recovery pose)
• Lung aspiration after choking, sending gastric acids into the lungs (The Cleveland Clinic reports that this can also happen due to the effects of a sedative like opioids that shut down the body’s natural defensive reflexes)
• Comas

Any of these factors can lead to a tragic overdose death, for which no patient under the care of an inpatient facility should be held responsible. Facilities promise a protective environment that allows patients to get better. When they fail to provide a secure place, they must be held liable for the consequences.

Contact Us if a Rehab Facility Ignored Your Loved One’s Overdose.

Attorney Martin Gasparian offers a free consultation for all families after a fatal overdose at a California rehab facility claims a loved one. This no-risk meeting is 100% confidential.

Call us today or fill out a free case review form.

There’s no obligation for this meeting. But remember, if you find you need our help, we charge nothing up front. We are only paid if your claim is successful. Then the lawyer’s fee comes out of a settlement a facility must pay you.