Transplant Operations Suspended at Porter Adventist Hospital
5 July 2018 | Porter Adventist has announced that it is suspending transplant operations. A number of trained staff members have left and the hospital has not been able to replace them given a challenging labor market. Porter has said that it needs more time to recruit staff and boost clinical support teams.
The Denver Post reported that the decision to suspend transplant surgeries was taken voluntarily and means that 232 patients will now have to find another hospital in which to have their transplant. If the patients are waiting for an organ donor, there is a chance they might lose their place in line.
“The decision to temporarily stop performing transplants was not taken lightly,” said Todd Folkenberg, the hospital’s CEO, in a news release this week. The suspension of transplants will last 6-12 months.
Earlier this year, Porter sent letters to approximately 5,800 patients who had received orthopedic or spinal surgeries at the hospital between July 21, 2016 and April 5, 2018, notifying them that they had been exposed to potential infection due to a problem with the sterilization process of various surgical instruments.
The Denver Post reported that the patient notification took place two months after external inspectors from a national hospital accreditation organization spoke to Porter administrators about the problems with their cleaning process.
For almost a week starting Friday, April 6, surgeries were suspended at Porter due to a residue found on some surgical instruments that was deemed to be the result of a water quality issue. Surgeries restarted at the hospital on a limited schedule on Thursday, April 12.
Porter Adventist Hospital is a 368-bed acute care hospital in the University of Denver area of Denver, Colorado. It is part of Centura Health, a health system managed under a joint operating agreement formed in 2006 between Adventist Health System and Catholic Health Initiatives. Centura operates facilities in Colorado and Kansas.
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