HOSPITAL IS SUSPENDING TRANSPLANTS

Porter Adventist Hospital has suspended organ transplant procedures for six to 12 months as it reassesses and retools its program with the help of the Florida Hospital Transplant Institute.

Porter, which provides kidney, pancreas and liver transplants, is one of three hospitals in the region offering organ replacements, along with the University of Colorado Hospital and Presbyterian/ St. Luke’s Medical Center.

About 232 of its patients will need to find another hospital, or potentially risk losing their place in line if they are waiting for an organ to become available. Porter said it is working closely with United Network for Organ Sharing to help its patients get into other programs quickly.

“The decision to temporarily stop performing transplants was not taken lightly,” Todd Folkenberg, the hospital’s CEO, said in a news release on Tuesday.

The deactivation of the program was voluntary and not ordered by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Earlier this year, the health department found problems in how the hospital cleaned its equipment after orthopedic and spinal surgeries between July 21, 2016, and April 5 of this year.

Concerned that unclean instruments could leave patients at a higher risk of infections, spinal surgeries were temporarily suspended until the problems could be resolved.

“This is a totally separate issue and program,” emphasized Wendy Forbes, a spokeswoman for Centura Health, which owns Porter Adventist.

The departure of experienced workers and the difficulties replacing them in a tight job market contributed to the suspension.

The hospital needed more time to recruit replacements and expand its clinical support teams.

“We wanted to take a step back and look at our staffing challenges,” Forbes said.

Porter executives hope to come back with a more experienced and larger staff than the 30 or so they had under the old system.

“All other health care services at Porter will continue without interruption during this period of rebuilding,” chief medical officer Patricia Howell said in the release.

Current transplant center staff will continue to work with patients recovering from procedures and will help with the redesign of the program.

Howell called strengthening the transplant center, which has been around for more than three decades, an imperative for the hospital to continue to deliver “bestinclass” care.