Elective surgeries resuming at Grande Prairie Regional Hospital

GRANDE PRAIRIE - Alberta Health Services (AHS) resumed a small number of elective surgeries at Grande Prairie Regional Hospital (GPRH) this week with the intention of performing additional elective surgeries throughout this week.

On Tuesday, a new issue related to instrumentation was discovered, leading to the postponement of the additional scheduled surgeries.

AHS is working with Infection Prevention Control (IPC) and other instrumentation and reprocessing specialists to determine what elements of the reprocessing process could be impacting the instrument sets. A review of the Grande Prairie instrument fleet is also underway.

AHS has procured additional instrumentation from across the province to support emergency, urgent and elective surgical volumes, in response to the newly identified issue.

AHS teams from across the province are urgently supporting instrument identification, inspections, logistics and transportation to support surgical activity at GPRH.

Supporting surgical activity at GPRH is a critical AHS priority while preserving surgical activity at other AHS sites.

IPC conducted a thorough and extensive investigation into the MDR issue and surgical cases over the past two years and found there to be no patient harm or impacts associated to the issue.

A key indicator in the investigation was reviewing GRPH’s complex hip and knee replacement Surgical Site Infection (SSI) rates over the past two years. SSIs are infections that can occur at or near the surgical site following a procedure. GPRH SSI rates were consistent with other AHS healthcare facilities and there were no infections associated to the MDR issue identified.

The vendor we are working with has completed a front-to-back review of the MDR system and we will be implementing the appropriate findings under the guidelines of a second expert who will arrive on site early next week.

A mobile sterilization unit is being transported to the site and will be operational by the end of the month, which will support the site in the short term.

In the longer term, we are in the process of replacing the steam sterilizers with electric sterilizers to mitigate the building system issues that have been identified through this process.

Patient safety has to be our top priority as we continue to navigate this situation.

We recognized the inconvenience and frustration delays in accessing an elective surgery may cause for patients and their families and we are very sorry. Plans are underway to increase surgical activity over the next few months in order to reschedule surgeries that have recently been impacted.

GPRH completes approximately 10,000 surgeries a year and we are committed to completing our surgical targets for this year. We have plans underway to increase surgical capacity once we are able, and we are confident we will complete this number of surgeries again this year.

Alberta Health Services provides acute care services for more than five million Albertans at hospitals, urgent care centres and health centres across the province. Our mission is to provide excellent and accessible patient-focused healthcare for all Albertans. Our current focus is on reducing emergency department wait times, increasing access to surgeries and improving patient flow.