A state health department report found that Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pa., where three premature infants died in a bacterial outbreak last year routinely failed to sanitize the equipment it used to prepare donor breast milk, according to an article on the WHDH website.
The health department ordered the hospital to correct several deficiencies, determining the hospital’s systemic failure to prevent infection in its most vulnerable patients constituted “immediate jeopardy.”
Geisinger has acknowledged the process it was using to prepare donor breast milk led to the outbreak in the neonatal intensive care unit.
A state investigation found Pseudomonas in a cylinder used to prepare donor breast milk, on a brush used to clean the cylinder, and in breast milk that had been given to an infant who died Sept. 30, the report said.
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