UVM Medical Center Teams Work to Re-Open Operating Rooms at Main Campus

Burlington, Vt. – On Saturday night, UVM Medical Center’s main campus operating rooms experienced flooding when a water pipe burst. We are grateful to the many staff who worked diligently throughout the night and on Sunday to protect equipment in our 22 operating rooms and set the stage for repairs, so we can return to providing high quality surgical care in these operating rooms as quickly as possible.

Two operating rooms functioned throughout the day Sunday, which provided the ability to handle emergencies. Central Vermont Medical Center and Porter Medical Center are also providing support as appropriate. The Environmental Health and Safety team has cleared 8 additional ORs to reopen, bringing the total number of operating rooms in service at our main campus back to 10. We will be performing emergency and inpatient surgeries today. For the next week, major vascular cases will be diverted to other hospitals when possible.

Out of an abundance of caution, 49 total scheduled elective surgeries have been postponed from today to a future date. Until additional ORs are able to be brought back online, surgical teams will be reviewing schedules and current capacity and rescheduling elective surgeries on a case-by-case basis. Patients who need to be rescheduled will be contacted about next steps. Teams are reviewing individual cases to determine what is possible for more urgent cases, and are exploring contingency options to use other appropriate space – a few have been moved to Fanny Allen, which is not impacted by the flooding.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience this will cause as we follow established procedures to ensure the safety of our patients and staff, and estimate it will take about a week for repairs to be made to bring the remaining operating rooms back online.

As with the many other challenges we have faced over the past two years, our talented and dedicated teams are working together to assess and manage the situation, and get our operating rooms back up and running as soon as possible so our patients can receive the care they need.

For footage of UVM Medical Center teams working together on Sunday to assess, clean and safely re-open the operating rooms, click here.

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