That statute does not apply to Polk or the companies, the panel said, as they are not nurses.
The second statute—OCGA Section 43-26-53—requires that similar incidents be reported to the nursing board, but even “assuming, without deciding,” that it imposed a reporting duty on Polk or the companies, the panel said Miller hasn’t shown they breached any duty because he hasn’t shown that a reportable incident occurred.
Although Hamm has a “history of disciplinary actions before the Alabama and Georgia Boards of Nursing” that includes failing to disclose a 2004 positive preemployment drug screen for cocaine, guilty pleas in 2013 for driving under the influence and following too closely, and obtaining prescriptions from doctors who weren’t her primary doctor, the panel said Calvin Miller did not provide any evidence showing Hamm was convicted of any felony or crime that would trigger a duty to report under the statute.
Nor, the panel said, did Calvin Miller show that “Hamm displayed or that the defendants were aware that Hamm displayed” any inability to practice nursing due to the use of alcohol, drugs, narcotics or chemicals.
