More issues with surgical instrument sterilization at GPRH

Grande Prairie Regional Hospital senior operating officer Candice Edey says patients are being told that work is being done to re-book surgeries.

“It is dependent on instrumentation availability right now, so we’re doing a strategic approach to making sure (that) when we’re re-booking people, that we have the right instruments available because we are working with our external reprocessing right now.”

“We are working on re-booking those folks who have had their surgeries postponed as soon as possible, so they are prioritized for the first folks that we are going to be re-booking.”

Edey says officials are confident the backlog of surgeries can be done in the next couple of months.

AHS chief medical officer Dr. Peter Jamieson wants to reassure patients that they are safe.

“If you have surgery in the Grande Prairie hospital, every instrument used in your case has been re-processed in Edmonton at an expert facility, and we are completely confident that those instruments are safe.”

Dr. Jamieson adds that a couple of reviews are being done.

“We’re looking at the infrastructure of the hospital and the steam processing. We’re looking at what we need to do to (have) appropriate loaner instruments and replacement instruments in place.”

“We’re doing a very detailed review of all of our cases to make sure there are no signs of infection, so it’s a multi-pronged approach.”

AHS says a mobile sterilization unit is being brought in and will be running by the end of May.

AHS says in a news release that there have been no infections found in the last two years related to the medical device reprocessing problems.

It also says that Surgical Site Infections related to complex hip and knee replacements are “consistent with other AHS healthcare facilities.”

Edey says it is hard to say when normal operations can resume.

“There are multiple pieces that we’re putting in place to be able to support off-site re-processing right now.

“We’re working with Edmonton and other sites throughout the province to be able to support with re-processing, as we’re sending the instruments out while the facilities maintenance team is working with them to do the evaluation of what is going on in the building to try to remediate those issues.”

Edey says they are also working with a vendor to bring in a mobile sterilization unit. AHS says it should be operational by the end of the month.

Edey says more long-term infrastructure improvements are also being looked at.

by Curtis Galbraith