Miami VA halts elective surgeries as A/C unit breaks amid extreme summer heat, officials say
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A downed A/C unit has put a stop to all elective surgeries in the Miami VA Healthcare System as crews work to fix the issue, the hospital told the Miami Herald on Tuesday. The move comes at a time when excessive heat warnings continue to plague Miami-Dade County.
The Miami VA plans to reschedule surgeries based on patient needs and moved some to other parts of the facility, at 1201 NW 16th St., to “mitigate any potential risk and out of an abundance of caution,” Director Kalautie S. JangDhari said in a statement.
Crews had to take one of the hospital’s primary chillers offline while conducting routine fixes in order to clean it. Until this work is done, elective surgeries will remain paused.
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Registered Nurse Bill Frogameni believes this isn’t a simple one-off problem — it’s in fact a piece of a much larger issue.
“This is part of a failure to invest in the infrastructure that supports our veterans and makes for a safe workspace for nurses and all the other staff,” said Frogameni, who is the director of the Miami VA’s National Nurses United, the union of registered nurses.
An ‘acute failure’
From Frogameni’s understanding, the medical surgical floors are affected — which has led to patients being relocated. Such patients don’t need critical care; but they can’t go home.
Multiple nurses told him there was a moldy smell emanating from one hospital floor from which patients were removed, he told the Herald.
The air conditioning system going on the fritz is something that happens nearly every summer, he said. And with South Florida’s continued excessive heat warnings, it only spells trouble for the Miami VA.
“To have an old building like that where the air conditioning is failing, you have vulnerable patients and staff working 12 hour shifts, it is horrendous. It is absolutely unconscionable,” he said.
This is the second time, he remembers, that it has been so hot that patients needed to be moved around.
A/C issues occur so consistently that “spot chillers” were installed around the hospital during the summer months, he said. A few chillers put up earlier this year were reduced but never went away.
“It’s an acute failure, part of a chronic problem,” he said. “We’re talking about it’s so hot you have to move patients or they risk dying.”
This isn’t just isolated to the summer. Even in the winter, Frogameni says temperature regulation becomes an issue again as rooms become too cold.
“We’re there for the veterans and they don’t get to leave. Their really sick,” he said. “They are at the point where they can’t really care for themselves...and that is our greater immediate concern.”
This story was originally published August 8, 2023 at 8:04 PM.
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