Seattle's Virginia Mason Medical Center has revamped its scope cleaning processes to avoid another E. coli breakout, but the change comes with increased costs, according to an article on the Fierce Healthcare website.
Thirty-two patients at Virginia Mason contracted E. coli infections between November 2012 and August 2013 even though the hospital followed recommended cleaning procedures for endoscopes.
Since then, the hospital had implemented extra steps such as a culture and quarantine process in addition to the recommended manual and automated cleaning.
Hospital officials said that the costs to expand the cleaning process were "astronomical" and may not be feasible for all hospitals.
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