Karen Smith, nursing director at Central Illinois Endoscopy Center, shares how her ASC clamped down on costs related to medical waste, which was costing the facility approximately $800 on a monthly basis.
Q: What is medical waste and why is it important to distinguish it from regular waste?
Karen Smith: There are certain things you can't throw away into regular garbage. Medical waste basically consists of anything saturated in blood or bodily fluids, so at our endoscopy center, that means anything we suction out of a patient during a colonoscopy or upper endoscopy. That kind of waste has to be thrown into red bags, burned and disposed of. I looked into our bills from the company that takes away our medical waste for us, and I found that at the rate we were going we were going to be sending out more than 48 containers in one year, and anything more than our contracted amount we were going to be billed for. So the center was spending almost $800 each month, and as we were getting busier and busier with our caseload, I started to look at why we were having so much medical waste.
Q: What did you learn?
KS: I started doing audits by literally going through our red trash bags to see what was in there that shouldn't be in there. I found cups, gloves, IV tubing, band-aids, wrappers, straw wrappers and other things that didn't need to be put in there. All those things were contributing to our high rate of medical waste and affecting our monthly bill.
Q: What was done to make sure the right items were being placed in medical waste bags?
KS: I told the staff and physicians that they needed to watch what they were putting in the red bags. Two months later, I did an audit and found that it was even worse. Since that wasn't working, what I ended up doing was putting up big stickers on top of the garbage cans that said "For medical waste only" and wrote exactly what was supposed to be in there, basically anything saturated in blood or body fluid. That helped enormously.
Q: What other ways are you trying to cut costs with medical waste?
KS: We ordered a system called Neptune, which is basically a huge machine that suctions all bodily liquid waste into it. It has a docking station where you can add chemicals to the liquid waste and then flush it away. The system is connected to the janitor's closet, which has a drain and faucet, and once it's connected to that everything goes right into the sewage drain. This way, we no longer have to send it out to be taken care of. It has saved us thousands of dollars a month.
Learn more about Central Illinois Endoscopy Center.
Q: What is medical waste and why is it important to distinguish it from regular waste?
Karen Smith: There are certain things you can't throw away into regular garbage. Medical waste basically consists of anything saturated in blood or bodily fluids, so at our endoscopy center, that means anything we suction out of a patient during a colonoscopy or upper endoscopy. That kind of waste has to be thrown into red bags, burned and disposed of. I looked into our bills from the company that takes away our medical waste for us, and I found that at the rate we were going we were going to be sending out more than 48 containers in one year, and anything more than our contracted amount we were going to be billed for. So the center was spending almost $800 each month, and as we were getting busier and busier with our caseload, I started to look at why we were having so much medical waste.
Q: What did you learn?
KS: I started doing audits by literally going through our red trash bags to see what was in there that shouldn't be in there. I found cups, gloves, IV tubing, band-aids, wrappers, straw wrappers and other things that didn't need to be put in there. All those things were contributing to our high rate of medical waste and affecting our monthly bill.
Q: What was done to make sure the right items were being placed in medical waste bags?
KS: I told the staff and physicians that they needed to watch what they were putting in the red bags. Two months later, I did an audit and found that it was even worse. Since that wasn't working, what I ended up doing was putting up big stickers on top of the garbage cans that said "For medical waste only" and wrote exactly what was supposed to be in there, basically anything saturated in blood or body fluid. That helped enormously.
Q: What other ways are you trying to cut costs with medical waste?
KS: We ordered a system called Neptune, which is basically a huge machine that suctions all bodily liquid waste into it. It has a docking station where you can add chemicals to the liquid waste and then flush it away. The system is connected to the janitor's closet, which has a drain and faucet, and once it's connected to that everything goes right into the sewage drain. This way, we no longer have to send it out to be taken care of. It has saved us thousands of dollars a month.
Learn more about Central Illinois Endoscopy Center.