Someone got into the oxygen storage area at Colorado's largest hospital earlier this month and disrupted the hospital's oxygen supply, sending staff scrambling to switch patients over to backup oxygen. No one was hurt, but the campus is now tightening security around what officials call critical infrastructure.
The incident happened Sept. 3 at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital, located on the UC Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, according to Colorado Public Radio. Someone gained access to the oxygen storage area and disrupted supply to the hospital, the outlet reported. Hospital staff quickly moved patients who needed oxygen over to backup supplies, and the issue was resolved a short time later with no patients harmed.
The hospital's facilities team switched to a different large tank, per the same account. Nurses and facilities crews leaned on procedures they already follow whenever the hospital's oxygen supplies trigger a low-flow or low-pressure alarm, and patients who needed the gas continued receiving it through those backup options throughout the disruption.
Why Oxygen Access Matters So Much at a Hospital This Size
Oxygen is essential to patient care at a hospital of this size, and a disruption can affect many parts of the facility at once.
CU Police said they had a suspect in the investigation.
Hospital Says It's Tightening Security Around Critical Systems
Colorado's largest hospital is now beefing up protections around critical infrastructure in the wake of the breach, according to the same report.
A 2024 study published in Patient Safety Journal analyzed 298 patient-safety event reports tied to oxygen-disruption incidents in inpatient and emergency-department settings and found the events can carry serious patient-safety implications. The most common contributing factor researchers found was a patient not being transferred to another oxygen source, present in 45.3% of the reports, while an empty tank showed up in 35.9% of cases.
The same study found more than a third of the disruptions happened on the unit where the patient was already admitted, and roughly 41.3% involved a breakdown in hand-offs, most often between a nurse and a patient transporter. Researchers suggested combining checklist-style tools with central monitoring and supervisory systems to cut down on the risk. None of that research speaks to what happened at UCHealth specifically, but it underscores how disruptive even a brief oxygen-supply problem can be inside a hospital.
A 2023 study hosted by the National Institutes of Health noted that oxygen leakage in hospital oxygen-generation systems can carry severe consequences, including fire and explosion, in a paper available through PMC.
What remains unresolved is exactly how the intruder reached the storage area and what charges, if any, will follow once CU Police complete their investigation.
