By Lara Fominoff @fomsy1 on Twitter

Surgical equipment trucked to Lethbridge, Brooks as water quality issues continue at Medicine Hat Regional Hospital

May 16, 2017 | 3:37 PM

LETHBRIDGE – As the water quality issue continues into its second week at Medicine Hat’s Regional Hospital, and mainly high priority surgeries take place, Alberta Health Services says area hospitals are doing their best to help out.
 
That includes Chinook Regional Hospital in Lethbridge and the Brooks Health Centre, where a lot of the surgical equipment from Medicine Hat is coming almost daily,  to be processed and sterilized according to Alberta Health Services Chief Zone Officer Katherine Chubbs.
 
“It’s quite an orchestration trying to get materials going from place to place, as well as the staff- who have the expertise on how the surgeries go in Medicine Hat… to make sure things are done the right way. So we’ve relied very heavily on Brooks and Chinook Hospital to help support re-processing of our materials.”
 
And that important equipment includes everything from surgical trays down to precision tools used in orthopedic surgery, cataract surgery and even scopes.
 
Staff in Medicine Hat are continually coming and going from the hospital, using down times like weekends in Lethbridge and Brooks to try and keep up with the demand. She says they’re optimistic they can try and maintain at least some of the elective surgeries over the course of this week.
 
Chubbs says they are making progress finding out the root cause of the water quality issue, which has to do with the MDR – or Medical Device Reprocessing equipment– but they will continue to rely on Lethbridge and Brooks to have all medical equipment sterilized for the foreseeable future.
 
Since May 9, 138 elective surgeries have been postponed at Medicine Hat’s hospital.
 
The decision on any additional postponements will depend on progress made on resolving the water quality concern that is still currently impacting the ability to sterilize/reprocess medical devices.