The Evans Surgery Center sent out letters this week to warn patients of possible infection.
The center is notifying about 1,300 patients who underwent gastrointestinal procedures with endoscopes that might not have been properly sanitized, according to the letter dated Tuesday.
An internal quality review of the medical facility on Ronald Reagan Drive discovered that the staff did not follow a manufacturer's recommendation to sanitize the endoscope for at least five minutes.
Jeff Simless, the vice president of operations at the center, confirmed the authenticity of the letter. After discussions with "leading authorities in infectious diseases," according to the letter, "the risk of disease transmission is near zero." Mr. Simless said the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta was one of the "authorities" consulted.
The center is offering free testing at any LabCorp location "to confirm that no infection was transmitted." LabCorp can be reached by calling (800) 203-0560 or visiting www.labcorp.com. The testing facility will report the results to the surgery center, which will notify patients within 10 working days.
According to the letter, a toll-free number, (888) 594-8651, was set up to answer patients' questions
As of Wednesday afternoon, at least 200 people had called the hot line or LabCorp, Mr. Simless said.
A similar warning was issued last month by the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center. Officials said that about 1,200 patients in the center's ear, nose and throat clinic might have been exposed to infection from endoscopy equipment that was not sterilized according to the manufacturer's recommendations.
Reach Donnie Fetter at (706) 868-1222, ext. 115, or donnie.fetter@augustachronicle.com.
The Augusta Chronicle ©2010 Morris Communications, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
How did this happen and how did they catch it.
As usual, the news article has enough inofmation to trigger questions, but not enough answers. Reporters: go back to journalism school!
Oh, that triggers another question. How many at the AC have actually been to journalism school?
Who owns the Evans Surgery Center. It used to be owned by Doctor's Hospital, but I understand it no longer is. As Donnie stated, this is very similar to the issue @ the VA, but I don't think any follow-up was done on that case. I would be curious if anyone actually caught something from the VA case. It was a good thing that Evans came up to the plate, rather than sweeping this under the rug.
the sanitation process is supposed to be a total of 5 minutes for the instruments, i think they only did it for 2.
Guess that explains the rash.
Journalism school? First off, journalism is run through a communications or english program, depending on the college you attend. There is no journalism school. And don't blame the writers. The editors and copyeditors are supposed to tell their writers what a good direction is for these articles. And they have to edit for word count, so that "important" information could have been edited out. The ignorance of some people!
WAG, the article answers both your questions. It happend because someone wasn't following the proper procedures and it was caught because they reviewed their procedures and realized they did something wrong. It's in the third paragraph. Perhaps you and Uncle Bill should brush up on your reading skills before criticizing the journalist's writing skills.
There are journalism schools at certain universities. I graduated from one. We called it the School of Journalism and it was contained within the College of Mass Comm. Either way the reporter worked with what he had. This type of story doesn't elicit a great deal of investigation.
"The center is offering free testing at any LabCorp location "to confirm that no infection was transmitted". Does this mean that if any infection was transmitted, that the patient will be charged for the test? Just asking.
No suprise here I know a evil girl that works there cant call her a women she is the she devil and can make ice melt works in billing