It's business as usual at Windsor Regional Hospitals Met campus after blown cooling-coils flooded two operating rooms last-week.
Hospital CEO David Musyj says they've found a way to keep those OR's running while they await parts for a permanent fix.
"We were able to pull the heat from some of the other rooms, and divert it into those two OR's to get them back up and running as of this part Friday," he says.
Officials believe an exterior vent may have failed resulting in the cold air coming into the building and freezing the pipes. When heat was turned up the pipes developed a leak.
He says the cramped area in the ceiling, built in 1970, made the temporary fix a challenge for staff.
"A lot of work to get to them and remove them," says Musyj. "Now we have to specially manufacture coils to be put into that space because they're not just a common coil you can buy off the shelf."
Only a handful of procedures were affected by the flooding, and Musyj wants to keep it that way.
When the new coils arrive in two-weeks, Musyj says the hospital will have to plan the installation around peak hours — if the current fix holds, there's no point in disrupting a busy point in the schedule.
"When we do put them back in — again it's going to be a tight fit — we don't impact surgeries whatsoever," he says. "So we'll do it so no one really knows it's happening, but it will get done."
He says the cost of the repair is already in the low $100,000 range, but that amount may go up when the hospital gets the final bill for the custom-coils.
Musyj thanked his staff, saying it's unfortunate, but Windsor Regional's team has had to deal with a lot of adversity and they've gotten very good at solving problems under pressure.