Updated at 6:03 p.m.
Vermont’s largest hospital delayed 49 surgeries Monday after a burst pipe flooded most of its operating rooms over the weekend.
The University of Vermont Medical Center said in a press release Monday that there would be additional delays as the hospital works to bring operating rooms back online.
Emergency and inpatient surgeries are expected to continue in the building, according to the press release, but outpatient elective surgeries would be rescheduled on a case-by-case basis. When possible, hospital staff expect to divert patients with “major vascular” conditions to other hospitals for the next week.
A few surgeries were moved to the University of Vermont Health Network’s Fanny Allen surgical center in Colchester, which was not affected by the flooding, according to the press release.
Saturday night’s malfunction affected all but two surgical suites at the hospital’s main campus, according to the press release. As of Monday, roughly half of the 23 operating rooms in the Burlington complex were back online. The remaining operating rooms in Burlington are expected to be out of commission for about a week.
Bonnie DuBois, an operating room nurse who was working Saturday night, said a colleague noticed drips from the ceiling in one of the third-floor surgical suites. The flooding started not long after, she said.
“It looked like it was raining inside the building,” DuBois said.
Photos provided to VTDigger by staff members show watermarks on ceilings and walls in what appears to be an operating room. The photos also show large cleaning carts filled to the brim with brown water. Heaps of towels, sheets and paper towels appear to have been used to soak up the water, but the puddles appeared to have reached a nearby hallway.
DuBois said staff covered expensive pieces of surgical equipment in plastic sheets while the hospital’s maintenance staff tried to contain the leak. Clinical staff spent the rest of the weekend moving beds, surgical tools and other large equipment out of the affected rooms.
On typical weekend shifts, DuBois and her colleagues stock up on supplies and prepare surgical spaces for routine surgeries, which typically happen only on weekdays. Staff is also available for emergency procedures. Few, if any, patients get surgeries on the weekend.
“If you want to look at the bright side here, it was the weekend when no patients were in the operating rooms,” DuBois said. “And so all of the staff was available to deal with what was going on.”
The flooding came just days before state regulators were scheduled to take up the network’s request to significantly increase service charges for two of its hospitals, including the UVM Medical Center.
The financial impact of these delayed surgeries was not immediately available, network spokesperson Annie Mackin said Monday.
“We’re dealing with the problem and looking at finances after,” she said.
Correction: Because of erroneous information from the hospital, an earlier version of this story listed an incorrect number of operating rooms.
