Two former employees of Saint Luke's Hospital of Kansas City (Mo.) allege the hospital disregarded concerns of rusted and broken equipment, the use of homemade medical instruments and a pest problem, The Kansas City Star reported Oct. 18.
The system's first sterile processing manager filed a complaint on Oct. 15 and 16 to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, The Joint Commission, and the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.
In the complaint, Elizabeth Bell wrote, "Saint Luke's sterile processing practices created a heightened risk of danger and serious physical harm to its employees and patients and jeopardized its accreditation."
Ms. Bell worked there from September 2022 through July 2023 before she was fired, according to the Star, and she believes her termination was in retaliation for voicing concerns. She is now a sterile processing team leader at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, and Ms. Bell said the two cultures of safety are like "night and day."
At Saint Luke's, operating room physicians used homemade equipment, which is not FDA approved; rusted and damaged equipment, which cannot be sterilized; and male physicians daily berated and harassed Ms. Bell for reporting these issues, according to her allegations.
"On several occasions, Ms. Bell was berated and cussed at by surgeons in front of [sterile processing department] staff, OR staff, and others ... Simply put, Saint Luke's OR had no interest in changing the 'culture' of non-compliance that had existed for many years," the complaint says.
Stacie Herrera, who worked in the system's sterile processing department until Oct. 10, told the Star she willingly left her role but felt she was being forced out after raising quality control concerns.
In response to the former employees' comments and media inquiries, the hospital invited local reporters to tour the sterile processing department Oct. 17.
"There just really isn't any way that that type of thing could occur," Michael Main, MD, Saint Luke's Health System senior vice president and CEO of Saint Luke's Physician Group, told the Star, referring to the filed complaints. "Everything that's portrayed in those is antithetical to what we do here at Saint Luke's ... this runs counter to everything we do."
"I see nothing to support those claims," Dr. Main added. "As you saw in the process today, how would any of those things happen?"
A spokesperson told Becker's the hospital takes these allegations seriously, adding that it invested $8 million in a recent renovation and has spent about $7.5 million since 2021 on new instruments, which are cleaned through a 14-step process.
"At Saint Luke's, we have a culture of transparency and continuous improvement," the hospital said. "In addition to the rigorous sterilizing process at Saint Luke's, we have multiple quality and safety checkpoints as part of our protocol, including daily safety huddles and a multi-disciplinary team in the OR setting to inspect the instruments, with our surgeons as the final safety net in that process. Saint Luke's surgical teams and surgeons take that responsibility very seriously and would never operate using an instrument they felt was not sterile or that did not meet our quality standards."
Editor's note: This article was updated at 11:20 a.m. CT to include additional comments from Saint Luke's.