Hospital absolved in eye infections
Department of Health and Welfare releases report
By TRAVIS PURSER
Express Staff Writer
Following an investigation, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare
stated the Wood River Medical Center was not deficient in its procedures related to
surgery there last summer that resulted in two eye infection cases.
That announcement came in the form of a two-page, Nov. 7 letter to St.
Luke’s Wood River Medical Center CEO John Moses.
The health department began its investigation Oct. 30 to look into the
cause of infections that left two local residents blind in one eye following consecutive
cataract surgeries at the Hailey hospital July 25.
Health Department nurse Gary Guiles and supervisor Sylvia Creswell wrote
to Moses that a review of hospital records "revealed nothing unusual."
Guiles and Creswell stated they found nothing unusual with hospital staff,
facilities, equipment or medications.
The Health Department still has not identified a cause for the infections.
Ketchum-based ophthalmologist Dr. Stephen Graham performed the operations.
However, Graham was not interviewed, Guiles and Creswell stated, because
he was not available at the time of the investigation.
Guiles and Creswell stated further that St. Luke’s reported that
"the surgeon had refused to cooperate with the hospital in its investigation."
Graham said in an interview Tuesday that he had not been contacted by the
Department of Health and Welfare. He said he had offered to meet with one hospital
representative to discuss the cases, but would not participate in the hospital’s peer
review process because "it really is an inappropriate venue to discuss the
hospital’s infection control problems."
Guiles’ and Creswell’s letter states the health department also
reviewed:
The hospital’s "autoclave [sterilizer]
records…which showed instruments were properly sterilized."
The company that supplied the instruments, equipment and
a technician for the surgeries, but company representatives were "not able to
identify a cause."
The hospital’s medication, by taking cultures, but
the "cultures were negative."
Guiles and Creswell stated also that several
interviews of hospital personnel were conducted before the health department determined
the hospital was not deficient.
Interviewees identified in the letter included the operating room nurse on
duty, the hospital’s infection control officer and the physician chairman of the
medical staff’s Quality Assurance Committee.
Wood River Medical Center administration stated the hospital is conducting
a separate internal investigation, but no report has been released.
