Broward General Medical Center in Florida has released a statement that 1,800 patients who were at the hospital for a chemical stress test could have been exposed to a bloodbourne infection. Someone called the hospital’s Compliance Hotline to report seeing a nurse reuse the same saline bag and a portion of tubing which are supposed to be one use supplies. Patients who may have been exposed had come into the hospital for heart stress tests, and were administered medication to raise their heart rates and increase blood flow, as opposed to running on a treadmill. The Hospital is investigating and has reported that 1,851 patients received the tests with the nurse in question handling their test. So far the Hospital has tested 410 of these patients for HIV and hepatitis.
Earlier this year a hospital in Denver, Rose Medical Center, was being investigated because of patient developing hepatitis C after having surgery there. After months of interviewing of patients and reviewing employee files, state investigators discovered a 26 year old operating room tech who’d tested positive for hepatitis C had been fired later for drug use.
State health officials and Denver police, tracked the employee down and questioned her and she admitted stealing fentanyl, a painkiller used in surgical procedures. She would steal the syringe off the cart in the operating room and replace it with a a saline syringe. But the saline syringe was often a needle she had used on herself. The employee was fired before this investigation after being caught in an operating room where she didn’t belong and testing positive for fentanyl. Shockingly after being fired for testing positive for an operating room drug, she was hired in two weeks at Audubon Surgery Center in Colorado Springs where she continued to steal drugs and leave infected needles for patients.
Rose Medical Center announced the hospital would pay for blood tests for 4,700 patients who had surgery there between October, 2008 and April, 2009 and may have been exposed. The Audubon Surgery Center notified 1,200 patients for testing as well. By early September, 75 patients of the two centers had tested positive for hepatitis C. The state says 16 of those positive cases have now been matched more definitively to the employee through lengthy DNA testing.
Kristen Diane Parker, 26, the surgery technician, who committed this crime while knowing she had hepatitis C has plead guilty and been sentenced to 20-years in federal prison. Now investigators are digging further into Parker’s short career to discover that she has worked in hospitals in New York and several in Texas and more tests will need to be done.
Another incident this year was with the Veteran Affairs clinics and a sanitation procedure which potentially exposed patients to contaminated medical equipment. The VA had to test more than 10,000 patients for HIV, Hepatitis C and other blood borne infections after discovering that several of their clinics incorrectly cleaned equipment used in colonoscopies. At least five veterans have tested positive for HIV and more than 40 for hepatitis.
While we want to trust the care we receive in hospitals, we have to realize these are human beings with jobs. Innocent mistakes happen and criminal acts happen in hospitals and can have far reaching results on people who went there for health care and end up with a disease. When considering risk factors for HIV and hepatitis C, we often only consider our own actions and whether we have been at risk. But for Lauren Lollini who went to Rose Medical Center for a kidney stone operation, she had no other risk factors in her life like needle use (intravenous drug users, amateur tattoo enthusiasts). Taking an HIV test, AIDS test or hepatitis C test is not just for high risk individuals — there are more risks than we realize.
