Agreed. Ice machines aren't supposed to depend on chlorine in the water to keep them clean. Commercial ice machines need to be cleaned and sanitized every six months in normal settings, and you'd probably expect a hospital to do it even more frequently.
The article says:
> Although hospital records indicated that the machines had been maintained and cleaned per the manufacturer's instructions, the researchers noted visible bacterial biofilms on the inside components of the machines.
But it seems like a hospital should have its own standards for cleaning and disinfecting, not relying on manufacturer cleaning instructions for a non-medical device being used for patients with highly elevated risk of infection.
One of the food safety rules of travelling in rougher places, where only boiled or bottled drinks are safe enough, is to never take ice in drinks. I suppose we can now generalize to wherever maintenance looks shoddy.
I wonder if they made assumptions based on the water filter that also did UV disinfection.
But, any source of food and water should be subject to frequent testing, it should have flagged up much sooner than this. This also applies outside of hospitals, the dodgy looking ice machines in e.g. hotels probably don't get tested at all.
The article says:
> Although hospital records indicated that the machines had been maintained and cleaned per the manufacturer's instructions, the researchers noted visible bacterial biofilms on the inside components of the machines.
But it seems like a hospital should have its own standards for cleaning and disinfecting, not relying on manufacturer cleaning instructions for a non-medical device being used for patients with highly elevated risk of infection.