Jennifer Burrows, the chief of nursing at Providence and Dr. Rachel Plotinsky answer questions about a health care worker who had tuberculosis at St. Vincent Medical Center.
Kristian Foden-Vencil / OPB
Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland is warning patients that a staff member has been diagnosed with active tuberculosis.
Citing patient confidentiality, the hospital is not saying when the employee contracted the disease, how long they worked with patients while contagious, or even in which department the person worked.
But Providence chief nursing officer Jennifer Burrows said there is potential that some patients and staff were exposed.
“It usually takes many hours of close face-to-face contact for someone to be infected. And many people who are exposed to tuberculosis never become ill,” Burrows said.
“Tuberculosis is generally a slow-moving disease. It’s caused by a bacteria spread through the air when a sick person coughs or talks.”
Providence is in the process of notifying anyone who had direct contact with the employee. The health system says it will provide free TB testing to anyone who believes they might have been exposed.
The health system would not say how the staff member was doing, or whether he or she contracted the disease abroad, around town or at work.
“It seems vague now because we’re still in the process of our investigation,” explained Dr. Rachel Plotinsky, St. Vincent director of infection prevention.
“We will certainly have the information in terms of exposure time period, those who are at risk, and we will be notifying them in short order. But at this moment, we do not have that information to give,” she said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have guidelines for how often an employee at a health care institutions need to be tested for TB. The frequency depends on how often that institution treats people with TB cases.
“We are a site that sees tuberculosis with enough regularity that our employees need annual testing,” Burrows said.
She said it’s the first time one of their caregivers has been diagnosed with the disease while at work.
Providence is working with health departments in Multnomah and Washington counties, as well as the state public health department, to determine the full scope of infection.
TB can be cured with antibiotics, but there are strains that have become drug resistant.
TB can live in a person’s body without making that person sick. That kind of latent TB cannot be passed on to anyone else. But if a latent infection becomes active, then the disease becomes contagious.