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YKHC President/CEO Apologizes For Unsanitary Dental Instruments, Says He’ll Work To Rebuild Trust

Katie Basile
/
KYUK

Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation President and CEO Dan Winkelman has issued an apology to YKHC customers for the recent incident involving partially sterilized dental instruments. Over a nine-day period from Sept 13 - 21, the dental clinic saw 191 patients and used partially sterilized instruments on up to 13 of them. The health corporation attempted to contact all 191 patients before notifying KYUK. They want the patients to test for Hepatitis B, C, and HIV even though the corporation says the risk of infection is so low that the CDC and State Epidemiology did not recommend testing. YKHC released Winkelman’s letter of apology Thursday night. KYUK talked with him shortly afterwards.

Winkelman: I want to apologize on behalf of YKHC to each of those customers and to the larger population that use our services. What had happened was not expected. There’re a couple of things we try to do as health care professionals, no matter if we’re at YKHC or anywhere across the country. And that’s one is not to hurt the patient, and two is to try and help the patient. And we fully didn’t live up to those goals in September at our Bethel dental clinic, and on behalf of the company, I apologize.

KYUK: Can patients still trust going to YKHC?

Winkelman: It’s my hope that over the next months and years we’re going to be able to rebuild our trust with all of our patients, and it’s going to take a lot of hard work by the employees at the Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation to redouble our efforts and come to work every single day and go the extra mile for every one of our customers.

KYUK: And as the leader of the organization, what are you going to do to ensure that that trust is rebuilt, that it’s earned back?

Winkelman: Well, there’s a lot of things that we’re going to be doing. There’s things that we’re doing right now. One of my goals when I got on about a year and a half ago in this new role was to look at ways we could improve our quality and focus on the customer. And in my travels throughout all 50 of the villages and in our service area, I heard loud and clear that people throughout the YK Delta wanted change at YKHC. And so I came back, met with our staff, and looked for ways to do that. And one of the ways was to increase staff here in Bethel and all throughout our YK system. And so that’s why I went after the joint-venture project and have pursued that and will continue to pursue that, so we can get more staff here in Bethel, renovate our existing hospital, expand it, and get into a new, larger facility with hospital staffing, so we can attract more health care professionals to the region.

That’s one of the areas we’ve been focusing on. There’re many other areas, but again, it’s going to take for us to rebuild that trust, we’re going to have to work doubly hard for that.

KYUK: In the letter you said that this incident supports a call for change. What changes do you expect to come out of this?

Winkelman: We are beginning what’s called a root-cause analysis, and that’s a detailed investigation that’s going to involve providers and health care professionals, and if needed, outside consultants. And we’re going to be looking at our sterilization practice in dental and see what exactly went wrong and where we can make improvements in the future.

KYUK: How is YKHC going to maneuver any legal action that results from this incident?

Winkelman: Every tribal health organization in the state and across the nation has medical malpractice through the United States Department of Justice. So there’s what’s called federal malpractice, and any cases are referred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and that [how] we’ll be handling any such cases.

KYUK: And as I understand, YKHC really didn’t have to go through contacting patients and asking them to come in for blood tests, but [YKHC] decided to take this step anyway. Why was that decision made?

Winkelman: Well, that’s the right thing to do. Every day when you come and see a health care provider, you expect that certain standards are followed, and when we don’t fully live up to that we want to ensure that there’s full transparency between us and our customers. And this was the right thing to do, and so we went out and did the notifications and did that by phone. And the reason we did that by phone was we wanted to personally inform people about what had happened and what the best course would be going forth. And then we also followed that up with written letters that were being mailed out over the last couple days. And then also we sent out a notification over KYUK in an effort to be as transparent as possible in this situation as well as to let a few of the affected patients know, that we couldn’t contact by phone, that if they had questions that they were to contact us on the 1-800 number that we have.

KYUK: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Winkelman: No, other than on behalf of Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation, I apologize for negatively affecting those 191 patients and causing concerns. I realize it can be very uneasy. It’s happened to friends of mine here in town and across the YK Delta that I’ve heard from, and [it] almost happened to one of my immediate family members who was there on September 12, the day before. And it’s something that’s very concerning to me, and we’ll do our best efforts to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.

KYUK: Dan, thank you.

Winkelman: Thank you.

Anyone with medical questions can 1-844-543-6361.

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Anna Rose MacArthur served as KYUK's News Director from 2015-2022.
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