{"id":48144,"date":"2021-03-04T17:27:37","date_gmt":"2021-03-05T00:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mercy-regional-medical-center-cuts-back-nonessential-surgeries-after-discovering-cleaning-issue\/"},"modified":"2021-03-05T00:27:37","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T00:27:37","slug":"mercy-regional-medical-center-cuts-back-nonessential-surgeries-after-discovering-cleaning-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mercy-regional-medical-center-cuts-back-nonessential-surgeries-after-discovering-cleaning-issue\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercy Regional Medical Center cuts back nonessential surgeries after discovering cleaning issue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Mercy
Mercy Regional Medical Center put a hold on nonessential surgeries to address cleaning and sterilization issues.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Mercy Regional Medical Center has cut back on all nonemergent and elective procedures after hospital staff members discovered cleaning and sterilization issues with some surgical equipment.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know this causes significant inconvenience for our patients,\u201d Patrick Sharp, who took over as CEO for Mercy in late January, said in a statement. \u201cHowever, safety and quality remain our priority.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sharp said hospital staff members decided to pause all nonemergent and elective procedures Feb. 19 to address the issue. It\u2019s unclear when a limited amount of surgeries were able to resume.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs part of our quality and safety review process, we identified a potential process gap in cleaning some surgical trays and instruments,\u201d he said. \u201cAny tray and instrument identified in the gap was removed prior to use.\u201d<\/p>\n

A \u201cgap\u201d is considered a variation in the hospital\u2019s standard cleaning process, Sharp said, but he did not comment further about the details of the problem.<\/p>\n

Sharp said all procedural instruments identified as an issue are being reprocessed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pause in nonemergent procedures allowed us to prioritize the reprocessing of all instruments for emergency and time-sensitive procedures for our community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Emergency and time-sensitive procedures have continued during this time, Sharp said. Surgery volume is now at 75% of normal volume, which for Mercy is 15 to 20 surgeries per day, and does include nonemergent and elective procedures.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will continue to prioritize these procedures in partnership with our physicians until all procedural instruments have been reprocessed,\u201d Sharp said.<\/p>\n

Sharp added, \u201cWe are not aware of any infections (to patients) caused by this potential processing gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sterilization issues at hospitals should be reported to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. A CDPHE spokeswoman did not provide comment Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n

In February 2020, it came to light that Medicare financially penalized Mercy Regional Medical Center for high rates of health problems associated with hospital care, such as infections occurring after surgery.<\/p>\n

The hospital was penalized in 2019 for high rates of health problems related to hospital stays and was expected to be penalized again in 2020, according to a Kaiser Health News database.<\/p>\n

Medicare withheld 1% of its payments for patients discharged from Mercy for the two years because the hospital ranked among the worst \u2013 the lower 25% \u2013 of hospitals that failed to prevent health problems related to hospital care, according to federal policy.<\/p>\n

Mercy is owned by Centura Health. Another Centura hospital, Porter Adventist Hospital in Denver, revealed problems with cleaning equipment used in surgeries in 2018, according to The Denver Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n

At the time, hospital officials said there was only one case where a contaminated tool came close to a patient, and said the risk of infections was low. Porter Adventist Hospital briefly paused surgeries.<\/p>\n

A state investigation, however, found the Porter Adventist Hospital staff was aware at the time patients were developing post-surgical infections at a higher rater, the Post<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s investigation found 76 instances where a contaminated instrument or tray \u201ctainted by blood, chunks of bone, cement, hair and even a dead insect\u201d were brought into an operating room, the Post<\/em> reported. And, the investigation found problems with how instruments were cleaned.<\/p>\n

In 2019, more than 60 patients sued the hospital. Many claimed they developed hepatitis B, meningitis, staph infections and other illnesses post-surgery. The lawsuit also alleged one person died three months after surgery because of an infection.<\/p>\n

State records also showed at least 17 to 22 employees at the hospital experienced one or more incidents involving contaminated surgical tools, the Post<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sterilization issue is discovered with equipment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48145,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,68,668],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-48144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-mercy-regional-medical-center","tag-public-health"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48144"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=48144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}