'Not out of the woods yet,' Eastern Health says of surgical tool staining trouble
After more than three days without postponing scheduled surgeries, Eastern Health is hopeful that it's returning to normal operations, but the health authority's CEO says he "can't guarantee it won't happen again."
Eastern Health said Wednesday that it's still finding surgical kits that can't be used because of staining, but the health authority believes it has turned a corner.
"We are not totally out of the woods" said CEO Dave Diamond.
"We are still experiencing some staining and some rejections of instruments but we are cautiously optimistic that we are moving to a new stage — a recovery stage. We likely have months of follow-up review."
All orthopedic elective surgeries were postponed for more than a week but on Wednesday orthopedic surgeons began doing some of those elective surgeries again.
Cause may remain a mystery
Eastern Health now believes it will probably never be able identify one single cause of surgical kit staining, a problem that was discovered Feb. 4.
"It's unlikely that we will be able to point to a single or a specific cause other than to say that we really believe that the state of our equipment over time is a contributing factor," said Diamond.
"It's unlikely that we will be able to point to a single or a specific cause.'- David Diamond. Eastern Health CEO
"We can't guarantee that it won't happen again," he said. "Which is very frustrating of course because preventing this into the future becomes very difficult when you don't really know the trigger."
The cost of investigating and trying to fix the staining problem at Eastern Health has risen to $3.7 million - up from $3.3 a week ago.
Patients have told CBC that they don't want to speak publicly about their concerns. Eastern Health says "categorically" that patients won't be bumped down wait lists for complaining about postponements.
"People would never be negatively impacted....Regardless of what opinions people express in any format, that would in no way impact how they are scheduled in a clinical setting." said Diamond.