by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | January 30, 2014
From the January 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Other things, like kit reformulation, can also save money and be an environmentally responsible practice. If a kit has 50 items, but you only need 20, what are you doing with the rest of it? It’s not sterile anymore, so you can’t store it for the next patient. However, if you work with your kit packer, you can cut costs and cut unnecessary waste.
With health care reform and the way things are going, reimbursement isn’t going up. In the past, hospitals used to just up their prices to cover expenses. But that’s not happening anymore. So now, it’s a matter of being more efficient and decreasing their operational costs in order to still keep serving their community. But it takes time and energy to work on those initiatives.
HCBN: What are some of the benefits of being more environmentally friendly?
LW: One benefit is the positive impact on staff health. In the July 2007 issue of , research was published showing nurses have a very high level of occupational asthma — higher than carpenters, higher than cleaning staff, more than twice that of office workers. They’re constantly exposed to bromides, formaldehyde, harsh cleaning supplies, latex, and flame retardants. So, reducing use of those types of chemicals can lead to healthier staff, less sick time, greater employee job satisfaction and lower employee turnover. And reducing employee turnover can mean savings of tens of thousands of dollars, just with the reduction of training time alone
HCBN: How much might a hospital expect to save with moderate greening efforts?
LW: That will widely vary, but among our Top Performers, the top 200 award winners in 2013, there was a savings of more than 16.8 million dollars in recycling programs alone. That amount was calculated by figuring out the amount of tons of waste that was diverted from a landfill to a recycling program — over 64 thousand tons of waste.
The same group saved over $30 million in electricity savings. They accomplished that by renovating facilities, switching to LED lighting, and other various energy initiatives.
Our hospitals also saved $18.3 million by utilizing reprocessing services for both invasive and non-invasive products. The reprocessors take them back and clean, sterilize and sell back to facilities at 50 percent of cost on average of what the purchase price would be for the same OEM device. This practice also diverted 330 tons of waste.
HCBN: Are there any initiatives on the state or federal level that would help to encourage facilities to be more environmentally conscious?
