Family: 'We're Done' with Exeter Hospital

The family of one of 24 patients whose test samples were after a hepatitis C outbreak at said they're never going back to the hospital again.

"We're done," said a woman whose parent was treated at the cardiac catheterization lab where the outbreak occurred. "They've bungled everything."

Exeter Patch is not identifying the family at the woman's request.

Twenty people have been infected in the outbreak, which state health officials said likely started when a hospital worker a bunch of drugs. The FBI is the matter.

Officials expect the victim toll to rise as test results come back on hundreds of people who have recently been treated at the cath lab.

Twenty-four people needed to be retested after their samples were left untouched for several days and became no good. Exeter Hospital blamed the state for the mishap. The hospital had been collecting samples and sending them to a state lab. A hospital spokesman said the 24 samples in question were shipped to the state on schedule.

Some of the 24 patients, however, the hospital for the snafu and said they didn't want to go back there to be retested.

In response, state health officials additional test sites in Hampton and Portsmouth for those patients.

The woman said she was relieved her parent could go somewhere else to be retested.

She said hospital staff she's spoken to have lacked compassion.

"You feel like a rat," she said. "They came across as very phony."

The hospital said it's doing the best it can.

"Some patients who are very upset, (and) we are following up directly with these patients to address their concerns and apologize for any inconvenience or additional anxiety or stress this may have caused them," hospital officials said in a statement.

Exeter Hospital CEO Kevin Callahan recently made a for the outbreak.

That has not swayed the woman.

She said she's arranging to have her parent enrolled at Portsmouth Regional Hospital for future treatment.

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