Some patients are still waiting for some surgeries to come fully back online at the Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center in Aurora after an equipment problem forced the cancelation or rescheduling of hundreds of procedures.
Last month, officials found a black plastic residue on equipment in pre-surgery procedures. The culprit? Officials believe the source was a reusable medical device washer used in the sterile processing of reusable medical equipment.
“They said, ‘Hey, you know what? We've got an issue. We don't feel comfortable using these sets of surgical tools,'" said Amir Farooqi, VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System Interim Medical Center Director. “They explained what happened, and we made sure those sets were taken out of use so that the issue could be identified further, and they started looking at other sets to make sure that no one was harmed.”
Farooqi said they believe the issue may be a piece inside “maybe something rubbing against something in some way, and that's causing the residue. The residue is visible to the naked eye, and that's how our staff were able to identify it.”
He said experts, including from Steris, the company that makes the equipment, have been at the facility trying to figure it out.
“It can be a challenging situation because it is complicated and because the standards are high as they should be, but we really are trying to bring in everybody in every way,” he said. “So our hope is that it doesn't last too much longer.”
Orthopedic and neurosurgery are just two examples of the more complex cases surgeons are currently unable to perform at the medical center.
Patients requiring surgeries that need reusable medical equipment are being treated at other facilities.
The facility is continuing to perform surgeries that can be done with disposable surgical equipment.
Some surgeries that can use disposable equipment include soft tissue mass excisions, ganglion cysts, carpal tunnel releases, some hernias, ureteral stents, and some podiatry cases.
“Four hundred have been rescheduled in terms of surgical procedures and around 100 or so dental procedures because dental also uses a lot of instruments,” said Farooqui.
He said clinical review teams have been looking over patient charts, working with care teams and coordinating with veterans to make sure their medical needs are addressed in a timely way.
“VA is making sure that they're taken care of, even if we can't perform the procedure ourselves,” he said.
