Huntington Hospital Operating Rooms Affected by Sterilization Worry, Numerous Surgeries Cancelled

The Huntington Hospital said in a statement Wednesday that an isolated issue last week impacted the hospital’s “capacity for surgeries” and that, at least for a time, the hospital was on trauma diversion status.

Unofficial sources said it is likely that over 100 surgeries were cancelled since last Tuesday, and that the hospital’s operating rooms are just today returning to handling normal workloads.

The situation resulted from the hospital management’s decision “out of an abundance of caution” to re-sterilize surgical trays, the hospital statement said. Without those trays, surgeries cannot be performed.

Surgical services have remained open, the hospital statement said, and “during the limited time we were on trauma diversion, we worked with the trauma network to ensure a seamless transition of services.”

Ironically, an unofficial source said, the contamination of the surgical trays resulted from construction designed to improve operations at the hospital’s Central Supply department, which reportedly is tasked with sterilizing all the tools and equipment used throughout every department of the hospital.

The construction comes in the wake of Pasadena Public Health Department demands that the hospital improve its infection control systems after 16 patients were infected by a dangerous “superbug” bacteria outbreak from January 2013 to August 2015, and 11 later died.

Last week’s incident is not the first time that Huntington’s operating rooms have reportedly been impacted by sterilization problems.

In August, 2015 federal health inspectors effectively stopped over 30 unstarted surgeries from proceeding at the Huntington after the inspectors reportedly discovered numerous violations of proper sterilization procedures during a surprise audit, current and former Operating Room nurses told Pasadena Now at the time.

In last week’s incident the decision to re-sterilize surgical trays and cancel a significant number of surgeries was made by hospital officials, apparently without outside intervention.

The statement obtained by Pasadena Now on Wednesday appears in full below:

“Last week, after our team identified an isolated issue, we made a decision out of an abundance of caution to re-sterilize surgical trays. While the re-sterilization temporarily impacted our capacity for surgeries, we have worked with physicians and trusted partners to swiftly resolve this issue and minimize disruption to patients and surgeons.

Surgical services has remained open. Cancellation decisions have been made by our surgical team on the basis of patient safety, acuity, need, surgery preparation, diagnosis and other relevant factors. We are making every effort to expedite the rescheduling of cancelled cases.

During the limited time we were on trauma diversion, we worked with the trauma network to ensure a seamless transition of services. To our knowledge, no trauma patients have been impacted (needed to go elsewhere than our base).

We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused to our patients and surgeons, and are grateful for the capable response of our team, which prioritizes patient safety above all else.”