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Barry Samsten of Klamath Falls, according to his widow, was being treated for a bedsore last July in the Intensive Care Unit at Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center in Medford.

Before the month was over, the 74-year-old was dead of multiple organ failure and septic shock — results, his widow says, of a bacterial infection which Asante told her occurred after the fentanyl he was being treated with was replaced by non-sterile tap water.

When the story broke over New Year’s weekend of the investigation by Medford police into Asante, several questions naturally came to mind:

How could this happen? Where was the procedural oversight? Was this case, and others like it, a mistake, deliberate medical sabotage, a criminal act to acquire fentanyl … or some combination of all those?

Most of all, the community wondered across social media outlets as the news spread, how many more tragedies like the one which allegedly befell Barry Samsten — and 36-year-old combat veteran Samuel Allison — are out there?

As we published our first story on what likely will be a lengthy investigation into Asante’s practices and personnel, there was a simple, honest answer to those questions:

We didn’t know.

We had received, as other media outlets did as well, reports from numerous sources providing pieces to the puzzle of what had happened at the Medford hospital — but none of those sources, beyond the families of the two dead men, were willing to have their identities revealed.

We strongly suspected that the deaths of Samsten and Allison would not be the only ones eventually attached to this story. But as various tolls of deaths and injuries made their way to the public, it was the Rogue Valley Times intentional decision not to follow suit in haste.

This wasn’t a matter of being first, or “being ahead of the story.” We wanted to be right.

As awful as the situation appears on the surface, no confirmation of death totals or other injuries were released either by the police or Asante. The numbers that all of us saw in the immediate aftermath of the story becoming public were not “facts” — regardless of the professional validity of those willing to be anonymous sources.

In a story such as this — one that likely will receive national attention and will have ripples spreading out for weeks, if not months — we are determined to report what we know, and what we can verify.

According to the families of Samsten and Allison, Asante representatives told them the deaths can be traced to the intravenous use of unhealthy tap water from an older part of the medical center; water that we have learned had been deemed at one point unsafe even for washing the faces of patients.

We know, from official statements from Asante, that infections traced to central water lines had been reported as early as last September.

We know that at least one surviving family member says they were told by Asante that one nurse is no longer employed there, and that their actions had been reported to both the police and the state medical board.

The use of unnamed sources, said Times’ Publisher David Sommers, is one that should only be taken with great caution, and only when our reporters and editors are satisfied that such sources have a factual basis for providing the information they are providing.

“We do not publish information without knowing where it came from,” Sommers said, “and we make every effort to explain as much as possible to readers about the source without revealing their identity.”

As the Asante investigation unfolds, the story will have many twists and turns, and many “anonymous reports” will continue to surface across social media and elsewhere.

We, though, will tread that ground lightly, when we do at all. When Asante or the Medford police update us, we will update you. When families and medical professionals decide to share their stories, we will share them with you.

We will, in short, report the facts.

Barry Samsten, Samuel Allison, their families and the other victims of this tragedy deserve that much, and more, from those who tell this story.