State regulators informed AdventHealth Porter on Oct. 12 that one of the Denver hospital’s two 50-year-old boilers was in such disrepair that it was no longer safe to operate and gave the health system 60 days to fix it or risk civil and criminal penalties.
The hospital ordered a backup boiler from Texas and planned to run its heat and hot water systems off the second 50-year-old unit in the meantime. But 18 days later, on the morning of Oct. 30, that second boiler failed — and the backup was not yet in Denver.
The broken boilers forced Porter officials to evacuate more than 100 patients and to close the entire hospital for 10 days, state officials said. But in their public communication about the hospital shutdown, AdventHealth Porter officials never disclosed that one of the facility’s boilers had been taken offline because it failed an inspection weeks before the second unit broke.
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Porter Hospital in Denver suspends operations after loss of hot water
The Denver Post discovered the report detailing the Porter boiler’s inspection during a review of records in Colorado’s state boiler database.
Hospital closures can complicate the care of sick people and they’re costly to hospitals’ bottom lines. They are a rare occurrence and lead to involvement from multiple local, state and federal agencies, including the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the state Department of Fire Prevention and Control.
Read the full story on The Denver Post's website.
