Kamloops dirty surgery tool issue to resolve

A Kamloops, B.C., hospital plagued by contaminated surgical tools and surgery delays is getting a new facility to clean the instruments doctors use in operating rooms.

A total of $10.7 million will be spent to build the facility at Royal Inland Hospital, and the unit should be ready early in 2012, the provincial government announced Thursday.

Hundreds of surgeries were delayed last year when contaminants, including dried blood and bone fragments, were found on surgical instruments.

The local RCMP were brought in to investigate if one incident of surgical tool contamination was the result of sabotage, but police could not confirm suspicions that there had been any tampering.

Another contaminated instrument issue arose at the hospital in early December, when it was revealed that the health authority had sent letters to 9,000 patients who had endoscopic procedures performed at Royal Inland between March 2008 and July 2010.

Overburdened equipment

The letters warned that the endoscopes, used to detect problems in the gastrointestinal tract, might not have been fully disinfected.

The overhaul will modernize a department that's too small and too old, hospital administrator Marg Brown said.

Brown said the number of surgical tools going through the current facility is much higher than the system was designed to handle.

NDP health critic Adrian Dix said the Health Ministry waited too long to address the issue and it would have been cheaper to fix the problem if action had been taken sooner.

When the problem first arose in the winter of 2010, the B.C. health ministry said new equipment was expected to be in place by early 2011.

The province will pay for 60 per cent of the total project cost, with the Thompson Regional Hospital District funding the remaining 40 per cent.