Officer Kelly Maloney was hurrying to help at an accident with injuries when another driver broadsided her police cruiser in November 2020. The crash crumpled the squad car and wrenched the Gainesville officer’s back.   

For nearly three years after the collision, Maloney’s back pain was controlled by injections of steroids into her spine. She continued to work, but the steroids did not.   

When the pain became unmanageable, Maloney opted to have her back surgically repaired at HCA Florida North Florida Hospital in July 2023.  

She says she understood the risks that came with patrolling the streets in her police cruiser. But she would not have risked surgery at North Florida Hospital, she says, had she known operating rooms there were suffering a plague of dirty surgical instruments that had festered unchecked. 

Maloney, a 40-year-old wife and mother of three, was looking forward to getting back to fighting crime after what was supposed to be a routine outpatient procedure. Instead, she has endured more surgeries and chronic, intense pain after infection spread in her lower back. 

Maloney was not aware that the hospital had regularly delivered impaired and improperly cleaned instruments to its 15 operating rooms for months prior to and after her 2023 surgery.  

Maloney and her husband, John, filed suit in the Eighth Judicial Court in Alachua County Tuesday afternoon alleging the hospital failed to “properly clean, decontaminate, disinfect, and sterilize surgical instruments used in operations.” The suit alleges Maloney’s infection was the direct result of dirty surgical instruments. It says tainted instruments might also have been used in subsequent surgeries needed to cut the infection from deep in her back. 

“I was an athlete, I coached my girls’ volleyball team at the recreation center, I was a police officer,” Maloney told Mainstreet. “I can’t run now. I walk with a limp. I wear a (transdermal) patch on my back to try to control the pain, to try to feel almost human.”   

Maloney’s back surgery came about six months before North Florida Hospital abruptly suspended all surgeries on Jan. 17, even directing Alachua County Fire Rescue to take the critically injured or ill somewhere else. That directive was lifted the next day, but it would be two months before a resumption of “full operations” for elective surgeries.  

Even then, operating room schedules were disrupted by intermittent issues involving improperly cleaned instruments or a shortage of necessary instruments. The crisis forced the postponement or cancellation of an untold number of operations, although the hospital has repeatedly declined to say how many.  

The suspension of surgeries at North Florida Hospital was first reported by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. A Mainstreet investigation revealed that surgeons had been complaining of dirty instruments being delivered to operating rooms for a period of “up to two years,” according to a longtime surgeon who operates at North Florida Hospital.  

The simmering crisis boiled over in an extraordinary, pre-dawn meeting on Jan. 10, when more than 50 doctors demanded the hospital respond effectively to the problem of “blood and other tissue” from previous procedures clinging to instruments. Operations were frequently disrupted, numerous sources said, with some scrapped as patients were being prepped for surgery or, in at least one case, already on the operating table. 

Following the January meeting, the hospital enlisted the help of Steris Corporation, a medical services company approved by the federal government for “disaster response.” Internal hospital messages obtained by Mainstreet revealed that Steris experts and technicians found that inadequately trained staff, faulty sterilization equipment and worn, damaged surgical tools combined to cause the contaminated instruments problem. 

Four surgeons who spoke with Mainstreet – anonymously, for fear of retribution – said the hospital and its parent company, HCA Healthcare, Inc., prioritize new revenue opportunities over critical infrastructure such as the sterile processing department. They said administrators hired too few staff for the department to keep up with the tremendous volume of instruments being used for surgery.   

One surgeon likened the dirty instruments to soiled dishes left too long on a kitchen counter: “Stuff hardens on them.”  

Kelly Maloney learned this only when she read about it in news reports. She was infuriated to learn of an internal memo in January from the hospital’s chief medical officer, Dr. Sherrie Somers, confirming that the hospital knew of its dirty instruments problem and had not addressed it.  

“We hear loud and clear that you have been promised improvements for 6-12 months,” Somers wrote in a Jan. 12 email obtained by Mainstreet. 

Maloney had her surgery in the thick of that period. She says she “felt great” for a few days after but began to “feel sick” about a week later and ended up back at the hospital with severe pain.  

“I went to the emergency room at HCA about 9 or 10 o’clock in the morning and sat there for hours waiting to be seen,” Maloney said. “They were feeding me Percocet pills all day in the lobby.” 

She said she was finally examined about eight hours later. An MRI showed her lower spine was infused with infection. She said she was rushed into emergency surgery sometime after 9 p.m.   

“They took out three chunks of bone,” Maloney said. She remained in the hospital Aug. 17-23, with a vacuum assisted closure (VAC) sucking infected fluid and matter from her spine. She was sent home with a prescription for the antibiotic Vancomycin.  

The infection was not cowed. 

Maloney was back in the hospital six days later, Aug. 29, according to medical records reviewed by Mainstreet. The pain was worse. The infection had morphed into a more sinister bug. She had a third surgery, and more pieces pulled from her back.  

After another five days in the hospital, she was sent home with a tube running through her veins to near her heart, delivering a cocktail of infection-fighting, nausea-inducing drugs around the clock. Her husband and children learned how to change her IV bags.   

“I couldn’t walk. The pain was so bad I couldn’t stand up. I was in a wheelchair,” Maloney said. “My kids had to help me go to the bathroom.”  

She said at one point her seventh-grade daughter had to be hospitalized. 

“Her nerves were just going crazy. It was the stress,” Maloney said. “She thought I was going to die.” 

Maloney’s attorney, Galen Bauer of Jacksonville, said HCA Florida North Florida Hospital engaged in a deliberate “cover-up.”   

“Your stories make it clear that they knew they had a problem for six months to a year before they operated on Kelly,” Bauer said. “Did they act in a timely way to correct it? No, they did not.” 

Bauer said he understands that post-surgical infections are not uncommon, but that Maloney’s sprung from deep in her vertebrae, between tightly compacted bone and sinew where surgical tools can probe.  

“This is not a superficial infection that you might expect to see,” he said. “This is not an infection like any other, and the hospital knows that.” 

Spokespersons for the hospital and HCA Healthcare, Inc., did not respond to Mainstreet’s request for comment on Maloney’s lawsuit.   

The hospital has previously issued statements insisting it puts patient care above all else. It acknowledged the suspension of surgeries in January, citing “operational” and “equipment” issues only after inquiries from the media. 

The hospital released a statement in late February saying it had added staff, improved training and upgraded equipment to ensure proper instrument processing. 

A month later, however, “surgeons were yelling” at the chief operating officer about presumably cleaned and sterilized instruments that had “residue” remaining on them, according to a doctor present. A hospital spokesperson confirmed that a problem with a new water purification system had caused “a small number of elective surgeries” to be rescheduled. 

Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), which regulates hospitals in conjunction with the federal government, sent a team to HCA’s North Florida Hospital on Feb. 6. According to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, AHCA investigators spent less than eight hours at the hospital and found “no deficiencies” in surgical operations, even as most surgeries were still on hold.   

An administrator at AHCA’s Alachua County field office concluded the hospital was taking the necessary steps to address its “issue.” 

Kelly Maloney will have to continue a regimen of multiple antibiotics to guard against the recurrence of infection.   

She said she accepts that she will never again be able to “work patrol, write traffic tickets, take people to jail” or work with the children she came to know as a school resource officer, her favorite job as a cop. 

But Maloney said she will not accept “people being made to suffer because a company wants to save a dollar.” She is seeking a trial by jury and damages in excess of $50,000.  

“I would like to see the hospital held accountable,” she said.