Are you aware of the importance of medical waste removal in West Palm?
Medical care industry, in the United States, as well as anywhere else in the world, serves to improve the health and address any health issue of a person. But behind all the surgical operations, treatments and research done at health care facilities, what is left? Medical waste and tons of it.
Most of the waste produced by hospitals and clinics don’t even fall into the category of “infectious”. That comprises only a fraction of all the waste, as most goes on paper, cardboard, plastic, metals. These are not a problem. Regulated and hazardous waste is. These need to be quickly identified and dealt with using modern medical waste removal methods.
Hospitals and other health care facilities often employ outside medical waste removal companies to deal with their infectious and hazardous waste.
If health care facilities are serious in minimizing their waste and its impact on the environment and decrease the costs of medical waste disposal, they have to become more sustainable. This is a job that starts from the upper management.
What affects reducing health care waste:
• Location of the waste generation
• Identification of medical or other wastes (it’s degree)
• What products and materials are used
• What kind of a medical waste segregation system is used
Hospital waste can be categorized as follows:
• Municipal
• Recycling
• Regulated medical waste
• Hazardous waste
• Universal waste
• Waste water
For this article, we’ll focus on regulated medical waste.
Regulated Medical Waste Removal
Regulated medical waste is packaged in red plastic waste bags. Industry standards are using between 1 and 3 pounds per single patient a day, but many hospitals and clinics treat about a third of all their waste as infectious, which is wrong.
Biohazardous waste includes: blood and blood products, pathological waste (human body parts, organs, tissue), body fluids, sharps (needles, scalpels, syringe, broken contaminated glass…), animal waste, laboratory waste and any other material contaminated by blood.
The fact is, contrary to what one might expect, if he or she has never had the opportunity to deal with medical waste removal, most patients, even in surgeries, actually produce very little waste that can be considered as infectious. The normal course of action would, of course, be for hospitals to separate biohazardous waste at its source, that is the patient’s bedside, or where he or she is treated, but most health care facilities are reluctant to do this yet. Some hospitals and clinics even have a policy that goes as far as discarding everything from the patient’s room as infectious waste and putting it in red bags. When this is done even for items that are clearly not contaminated by blood, it is not sound medical waste management, but a waste of money.
With the advancements in medical industry, patients today come and go much more quickly. This means more waste per one patient. If everything is regarded as “biohazardous”, not only does that affect the budget of the hospital, but it doesn’t do a service for its medical waste removal West Palm program, either.
