'Orthopedic Clinic Where Four Patients Died and 18 Were Infected in Group Outbreak': Hospital Director and Nursing Assistants Referred to Prosecutors

[Financial News] Last year, four patients died and 18 were injured in a group medical infection at an orthopedic clinic in Gangneung, Gangwon Province. The clinic director and nursing assistants involved in the case have been referred to prosecutors.
According to Yonhap News Agency on the 16th, the Gangwon Provincial Police Agency’s Metropolitan Criminal Investigation Unit referred, without detention, a doctor in his 50s identified as A, the director of an orthopedic clinic in Gangneung, and two nursing assistants to prosecutors on the 7th on suspicion of professional negligence resulting in death or injury.
They are accused of failing to take required infection-prevention precautions during procedures, causing patients to become infected with methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA), resulting in death or injury.
An epidemiological investigation by health authorities found that 22 of the 863 patients who received procedures to relieve lower-back pain at the clinic between May and July last year became infected. Four of them died from septic shock and multiple organ failure, among other causes.
The investigation uncovered numerous hygiene-management failures, including the shared and repeated use of 500 mL bags of normal saline for multiple patients, failure to wear sterile gloves, inadequate hand hygiene, and the use of nonsterile medical instruments. The same bacterial genotype was detected in samples from infected patients, medical staff, and the hospital environment, confirming that the outbreak was caused by a single source of infection.
Police sought an arrest warrant for A, but the court rejected the request, citing no risk of flight or destruction of evidence. A reportedly acknowledged negligence during questioning while maintaining that there had been no intent to cause harm.
The clinic, which had voluntarily suspended operations after the incident, is now closed after the local government canceled its permit to establish the medical institution and ordered its closure in March.
[email protected] Ahn Ga-eul Reporter