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Audit: Lax procedures lead to infection control problems at Ontario hospitals

Infection Control Monitor, January 30, 2004

An audit of 154 Ontario hospitals identified 16 facilities with infection control procedure problems, including one hospital that reused single-use medical equipment and has since contacted scores of patients about possible infections, The Toronto Star reports.

Despite some negative findings, Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman says the audit results were mainly positive and that Ontario residents should remain confident in the health care system's safety.

"We don't say everything is hunky-dory. What we do say is that Ontarians should be confident that the situation in Ontario's hospitals today is much better than when these audits were called for," Smitherman says.

Health officials ordered the audit two months ago after eight hospitals informed them that some patients had been exposed to infections because of improperly cleaned medical equipment. The audit revealed that the majority of the facilities identified as having infection control problems were lax in properly cleaning their medical equipment.

One of the problem hospitals, Grand River Hospital in Kitchener, plans to contact at least 100 women who may have been exposed to the human papilloma virus between May 1990 and November 2003 when they were examined with equipment that had only been disinfected, not sterilized.

The audit identified infection control problems such as facilities that used older sterilization machines, poor recordkeeping, and reuse of single-use medical equipment.

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