‘Unexpected but manageable’: Heating failure leads to cancellation of elective surgeries at Chatham hospital

The hospital in Chatham, Ont. (Source: Google Maps)

All elective surgeries scheduled for Wednesday at Chatham’s hospital have been cancelled due to an ongoing heating system failure.

In a statement issued Tuesday afternoon, Chatham-Kent Health Alliance says it is experiencing operational issues with its boiler system, leading to temperature fluctuations in some areas of the building.

That includes the hospital’s medical device reprocessing department, which limits the ability to properly reprocess and sterilize medical equipment.

As a result, officials say elective surgeries planned for Jan. 28 cannot safely proceed.

Adam Topp, CEO of Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, told CTV News the situation is “unexpected but manageable.”

In the process of repairing one boiler, Topp says another stopped working. As a result, the hospital is functioning with about one and a half of its usual three boilers.

The infrastructure was approximately 23 years old and was slated for replacement next year.

“So, they’re down, but we’re maintaining things now, and we will. It’s just that we don’t have all the steam that we need to operate quite everything,” Topp said.

Boiler specialists are on site, and temporary replacements are on the way.

Patients receiving care at CKHA are not being impacted and are not being moved to different parts of the building, Topp adds.

Those affected by the cancellations are expected to be contacted directly.

Hopeful the issues will be fixed without added disruptions, Topp says it’s too early to determine whether the cancellations will linger into Thursday.

“The message is we are in touch with each individual patient, and each individual patient has a different circumstance in terms of rescheduling and whatnot, and that’s going to be a high priority for us,” he said.

CKHA stated the problem will not have an impact on emergency surgeries.