Boston hospitals' protocols vary widely for reporting missing prescription pills, according to the Boston Herald. Boston's five major hospitals all said they would comply with state standards and report to the Department of Public Health in the case of a single unaccounted-for pill, but reporting "significant" losses, which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) largely leaves to hospitals' discretion, is far less uniform. For example, the threshold for a report to the DEA at Boston Medical Center is the loss of five to 10 pills, whereas Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center reports the disappearance of any amount of a "federally controlled substance." Article