The Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation is offering blood tests to patients treated at their dental clinic between Sept 13 – 21 after the clinic learned that some instruments were only partially sterilized.
Thirteen instruments were incompletely sterilized and possibly used on patients during the eight-day period. During that time, 191 patients received treatment. YKHC is contacting all of them for testing for Hepatitis B, C, and HIV. The good news is that the tests are free and risk of infection is low.
Tiffany Zulkosky is YKHC Vice President of Communications.
“The risk is so low that the CDC and State Epidemiology did not recommend a need for doing testing,” Zulkosky said. “And so really, going through this process for YKHC is to help quell concerns among any patients that might have been treated.”
John Nick of Bethel is one of the patients the agency contacted to get tested. He had a routine, bi-annual appointment on September 21, the last day of the suspected timeframe.
“Five days later I end up getting a call stating that I needed to go to get a blood test, and they wouldn’t tell me any reason as to why I had to,” Nick said.
Nick got his blood drawn Tuesday, but said he was still having a hard time getting information from YKHC.
“And I called them a second time asking them, and they said my manager will give you a call back, and I still haven’t heard a word from them,” Nick said.
Though Nick had not been called back by Wednesday afternoon, that morning YKHC issued a press release on the issue and posted information on their website. Nick is now seeking legal representation against YKHC through Valcarce Law Office.
To arrange a blood test, Bethel-based patients can do a walk-in. Just check in at registration and ask for a test in the lab. Village-based patients will be contacted by health care providers who’ll arrange blood tests for them in the village or in Bethel.
Anyone who gets tested will also need a follow-up test in January. The first test is to see if the patient already has an infection. The second test is to see if the patient has developed an infection that could be linked to YKHC’s instruments. This is because it takes weeks to months before a test can detect the infections in the body.
Zulkosky said that of all the people treated by the clinic only a few were exposed to unsanitary dental tools.
“Of the 191 in the population that were treated during that week,” Zulkosky said, “only 13 might have been infected. No more than 13, but possibly less.”
YKHC isn’t able to trace which instruments were used on which patients.
YKHC Vice President of Hospital Services Jim Sweeney said that the clinic discovered the error on Sept 21.
“One of the technicians who was preparing to get a patient ready for a dentist noticed that the bag that she had was not sterilized. So she brought that up to her superior’s attention,” Sweeney said. “And then we began to do our inspection of our stock, and then we started to look back on the records to find out why that bag got out there.”
Sweeney said the dental clinic has made changes to prevent this from happening again.
“We’ve put [on] additional people, additional sign-offs on the sterilization, [and] assigned specific people to sterilization,” Sweeney said. “We’re also doing a time-out for sterilization at the patient’s chair. So prior to a dentist working on a patient, they’re doing a time-out and verifying that the equipment was all sterilized.”
YKHC also plans to bring in an outside sterilization expert to review the processes in the dental clinic and throughout the hospital.
Anyone with medical questions can talk with a nurse by calling 1-844-543-6361.
Anna Rose MacArthur is a reporter at KYUK in Bethel.
