Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital still diverting patients despite saying sterilization equipment is working

Six days after Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital ceased most of its surgical procedures, and four days after a company spokesperson said those operations would resume “as soon as possible,” the hospital remained impacted Tuesday.

“We’re managing it day by day, for now,” Stacie Miller, chief nursing officer at Santa Rosa Memorial, said Tuesday afternoon. “We have a process that we communicate internally with physicians. We don’t want to delay anything we don’t have to, obviously. But our commitment is to the safety of our community.”

And that, Miller said, means acting with an abundance of caution.

“We don’t want to go, ‘Hey, turn the light back on,’ then find out it wasn’t ready,” she said.

As noted in a prepared statement from Providence on Friday, Santa Rosa Memorial “discovered a water treatment concern with two machines used in our Sterile Processing Department” last Wednesday, leading the facility to suspend elective surgeries at its trauma center.

Two employees told The Press Democrat last week that surgical instruments were coming out of the machines spotted or rusty.

Cautioning that she is a nurse by training, not a sterile processing technician, Miller said, “All of our instruments before sterilization go through a wash process. Just like at home with dishwashers or washing machines. It’s important they reach a certain level of quality.”

In the sterilization process, that means de-ionizing the water, or removing positive and negative charges.

According to Providence, independent vendors tested the water that feeds into the sterilizing machines and found that it was properly cleaning and sterilizing the surgical instruments.

The hang-up, Miller said, is that the hospital is asking those third-party vendors to conduct multiple layers of testing.

“It takes a while to get them onto our campus,” she said. “We won’t move on (putting the affected machines back into use) until we can be absolutely sure.”

It is not uncommon for a patient to be rerouted from one hospital to another when there is an issue with capacity. The strategy is less common for equipment problems. And Santa Rosa Memorial has a Level II trauma center, meaning it staffs surgeons every hour of every day. Patients needing that level of care would have to be sent as far as San Francisco, Oakland, Vacaville or Walnut Creek.

Miller was unable to provide information on how many patients had been diverted from Santa Rosa Memorial to other facilities, or where they went.

She did note, though, the hospital has an outpatient surgery center across the street from the trauma center. And that center has a sterilization unit, but it’s considerably smaller than that of the trauma center.

Memorial also has been sending a limited number of instruments to its sister facilities, such as Healdsburg and Petaluma Valley, for off-site sterilization.

In that way, Santa Rosa Memorial has been able to perform urgent or emergent surgeries — basically, those considered life-threatening.

The hospital has been tracking postoperative infections — a possible indicator of a sterilization problem — closely, Miller said, and has not seen an increase over the past month.

In fact, she added, the hospital is tracking fewer of those infections in 2023 than it had by this date in 2022.

The California Department of Public Health said it “is aware of this situation and we are investigating.” The state agency provided no further information, saying it can’t comment on open investigations.

Meanwhile, one matter for debate is the impact of Memorial’s sterilization issue on labor relations.

On Monday, a Santa Rosa Memorial employee shared a text message from hospital management saying, “Elective surgeries are canceled for 10/24. Staff for tomorrow will be canceled in the order of least MROH hours. If you do not receive a call, text, voicemail then please arrive at your scheduled start time.”

MROH, or “mandatory reduction of hours,” means Providence does not intend to pay nurses for hours missed due to the sterilization issues, according to the employee.

The employee requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation from management.

Miller downplayed any serious workplace impacts.

“Our hospital (patient) census has remained pretty steady,” she said. “We haven’t seen a dip. There’s a lot going on in O.R., a lot to keep our arms around. I’m not aware of a vast number of employees being sent home.”

All in all, the nursing officer said, Santa Rosa Memorial is looking forward to moving past this disruption.

“I am very proud to work for this hospital, and of its connection to the community,” Miller said. “We’ve been here a long time. We want to serve our community and its needs. Surgery is one way for us to do that. But clearly our priority is to do it safely.”

You can reach Phil Barber at 707-521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @Skinny_Post.