The mystery illness strikes again.
Rehab patients at Fanny Allen were transferred to the UVM Medical Center campus Saturday after multiple staff members reported feeling dizzy and nauseated. It’s the fourth time a group of nurses at the Colchester campus have reported similar symptoms in the past 13 months.
Ten staff have fallen sick in the last month. After the latest on Saturday, UVM Medical Center President Dr. Stephen Leffler said 14 patients were moved off the unit out of an “abundance of caution.”
The reports of nausea, fatigue and dizziness come after the network has completed multiple investigations and invested in substantial renovations to fix the issues at the facility, which is part of the UVM Health Network.
“it’s amazingly frustrating because a lot of people put tremendous work into figuring out what’s going on over there and providing safe care,” Leffler said. “That space is a great space to deliver inpatient rehab… But at the end of the day we have to make sure that it’s safe for patients and staff.”
The recent staff illnesses come days after UVM Medical Center reported that it had been the victim of a cyberattack, which shut down the hospital’s electronic medical records system. The attack reduced the number of procedures that could be done at the hospital and delayed appointments across UVM Health Network’s six hospitals in Vermont and New York.
The patient transfers were “not easy to do right now with all of our IT challenges,” Leffler acknowledged. It was also the latest episode in a perplexing saga of unidentified illness at Fanny Allen.
In early October 2019, 17 Fanny Allen staff members went to urgent care with symptoms of dizziness and nausea after reporting a smell that some described as gas fumes. The facility closed its operating rooms after more staff felt sick the following month, forcing staff to reschedule about 650 surgeries in December and January.
The hospital reopened the operating rooms in late January, after the state and the medical center completed investigations, and after the hospital installed new air filters, carbon monoxide detectors, and upgraded the kitchen exhaust system. There was no clear cause of the symptoms, but Leffler and other leaders later attributed them to exhaust fumes from a truck idling at a loading dock near an air intake.
In April and May, 21 staff members fell ill again — though this time they didn’t smell gas-like odors and they worked on the inpatient rehab units, a different floor from the operating rooms.
Officials closed two floors and moved patients to UVM Medical Center in order to investigate.
Multiple agencies, including the Vermont Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the state police, hospital staff and a private consultant all looked into the issues. After a series of tests, VOSHA investigator Bill Irwin, chief of the Radiological and Toxicological Sciences Program for the Department of Health, found that the problem was caused by a cleaning chemical that was used by nurses after the hospital ran out of disinfectants during the early months of the pandemic. But, Irwin told VTDigger in August, the nurses had displayed such a diverse array of symptoms that it was impossible to attribute the illness to a single cause.
The spring incidents were not caused by the same issues as those that occurred last fall, according to Irwin’s July report.
Leffler said Monday that since then, UVM Medical Center had changed its cleaning protocols, and increased safety measures. But after staff and patients moved back to the campus in early October, second floor staff continued to get sick. The hospital moved patients from the second floor to the first floor. When a staff member on the first floor reported similar symptoms on Saturday, hospital leaders decided to transfer patients to Burlington.
“It is difficult to acknowledge that with the broad investigation, upgrades and improvements, we are unable to determine exactly what is going on,” Leffer said in a hospital statement. UVM Medical Center leaders have reached out to the state of Vermont, as well as the occupational health and safety consultant who assisted at Fanny Allen earlier this year. On Monday, nurses union president Deb Snell did not respond to requests for comment.
Urgent care, outpatient rehab and the operating rooms remain open and safe, Leffler emphasized. Air quality tests are being run every hour, he said.
The hospital will focus on the transition for patients and staff and then reopen the investigation, and medical center leaders have reached out to the Department of Health, he said.
Systems remain down after cyberattack
It’s the latest in a series of challenges for UVM Medical Center, which was the victim of a cyberattack last week. The hospital’s electronic medical records system remains down, limiting the number of appointments and surgeries that can take place.
Dozens of hospitals across the country have reported similar attacks, some of which have been linked to Russian hackers. In an interview Monday, Leffler said he didn’t know the source of the cyberattack against UVM or whether the hospital had been targeted by a foreign group. He had not received any ransom notice, he said.
“All of my time, 24 hours a day right now, is focused on making sure that people are getting good, safe care,” he said.
Leffler said he hoped some system could be back up and running by the end of the week, though he couldn’t say when he expected to have the programs restored to normal.
In the meantime, the hospital chief encouraged patients to confirm appointments before coming to the hospital. That includes patients receiving chemotherapy, some of whom have been impacted and are being handled on case by case basis.
Since the hospital’s IT department discovered the issue on Wednesday, staff have switched to paper records, leading to delayed appointments. Most breast imaging and all outpatient radiology appointments for cancer patients have been canceled, as have elective X-rays, he said. Some Covid test results have been delayed.
On Friday, the hospital had about 29 surgeries, about half of the typical number, Leffler said. Some procedures were moved to other hospitals in the network, which were less affected.
The IT team worked throughout the weekend to address the issues, he added. Staff were reviewing files, cleaning them, identifying malware, and increasing security for the email system, all in preparation for getting the system back up and running. “My understanding is they’re making great progress towards working towards a clean environment where they can start safely bringing some things back online later this week,” he said.
Incoming email to the UVM Health Network is currently unavailable, according to a statement from Dr. John Brumsted, network president and CEO.
Patients with appointments for breast imaging or outpatient radiology should call 802-847-3443 or 802-847-6625 to reschedule or before going in for appointments.
The hospital is less efficient with paper records, he said, but “we’re using extra staff to make sure that we’re very carefully meeting everything that needs to be done to provide safe care.”
