Reducing Regulated Medical Waste

What percentage of your total hospital waste volume is disposed of as regulated medical waste (RMW)? If your answer is higher than 15%, then there is room for improvement. A comprehensive waste segregation and minimization program can save your health care facility a significant amount of money while reducing its environmental impact.

Background

Many hospitals routinely throw more than 50% of their waste into the RMW stream—partly due to an outdated philosophy that anything that comes into contact with a patient or clinician is medical waste. RMW was created as a regulatory category to protect human health from infections or disease—and was spurred in large part by syringes and hospital waste washing up on the beaches and the emergence of AIDS and hepatitis B. An internal waste audit will show that a large portion of the waste generated by the hospital does not carry infectious potential, and is very similar to that of a hotel or office building — containing large amounts of paper, cardboard and food waste. Magazines, newspapers and fast food debris are also typically found in red bag containers in patient rooms.

The Financial Imperative

Recommended Reading

Practice Greenhealth’s 10 Steps to
Reducing RMW

Hospitals often pay between 8 — 10 times as much per pound to dispose of RMW versus solid waste. Case studies at numerous hospitals across the US prove that with comprehensive education, hospitals can realistically aim to decrease RMW to a mere 6-10% of their waste stream and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) suggests that only 3-5% of hospital waste truly needs to be disposed of as RMW.

The tremendous opportunities for cost and volume reductions do not come from the “gray areas” where it is difficult to determine whether the item is “significantly contaminated” with blood and body fluids or not; rather the most significant opportunities for RMW reduction come from segregating the coffee cups, packaging, paper towel waste, gloves, clean blue wrap and sandwich wrappers that inadvertently get tossed into the red bag. Practice Greenhealth can help you set up a program that will minimizethe amount of RMW the facility generates while ensuring compliance and saving significant healthcare dollars.

Tools for RMW Minimization

The minimization of RMW Ioccurs as the result of several concurrent programs. Paramount however is a comprehensive segregation program that separate “true” biohazardous or infectious medical waste from solid waste. This process can be time-consuming to implement, but is the foundation for any successful RMW minimization program. Facilities can further minimize medical waste by implementing other kinds of waste minimization and recycling programs after the initial RMW segregation program is underway and established. Practice Greenhealth walks you through the steps necessary to build a successful segregation program and then highlights other RMW minimization opportunities by topic area.

10 Steps to Implementing a Regulated Medical Waste Reduction Program

Reusable Sharps Containers

Suction Canister Waste

Single-Use Device Reprocessing

Blue Wrap Recycling

Success Stories

Numerous hospitals across the country—in varied regulatory environments—have already reduced their RMW to less than 15% of total waste volume. The following case studies highlight a few of the stories of these facilities and demonstrate the cost-savings that result from comprehensive RMW minimization programs.