A new report from the Colorado Sun details the halting of surgeries at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital in July.
A state inspector apparently saw “17 stainless steel carts, each one with between 11 and 30 trays of dirty surgical instruments waiting to be cleaned. Upstairs near the operating rooms, there were more: nine additional carts in a holding room where instruments are taken immediately after surgery and two carts sitting out in the hallway.” The situation was then declared an “’immediate jeopardy,’ a serious finding that concludes patients are facing imminent harm if the issue isn’t resolved quickly.”
The inspection documents show that “regulators visited the hospital after receiving a complaint about possible state and federal violations. … The state ordered UCHealth to make fixes.” The backlogs in the SPD were tied to “the opening of new operating rooms in the spring.” Approximately twenty more full-time equivalent employees were deemed necessary once the operating rooms opened, and the facility’s staff numbers did not increase.
Surgical instruments were often going “more than 24 hours without being cleaned following a surgery, and a technician told inspectors that at times the cleaning delay could last up to six days.” On some days during inspection, “there were more than 400 instrument sets that went unprocessed, and one day saw 500 sets go unprocessed.”
The subsequent pause on nonemergency surgeries “lasted from July 16 until CDPHE lifted the immediate jeopardy finding July 25.” Staffing has since grown in the department, and the problems were fixed when inspectors returned in September.
