Hospital Waste Management

Hospitals can save and transform lives. However, as part of that operation, hospitals often have to get involved in areas that would be stunning to most people. Among the more important of these sectors are hospital waste management and interaction with medical waste disposal companies.

Let’s start by answering these key questions: What is hospital waste? What is hospital waste management?

Hospital waste is generally defined as the disposal of used medical supplies. Medical waste, including surgical equipment, bedsheets, tissues, and masks, can range wildly. Medical waste is sometimes relatively small and easy to dispose of. In other cases, medical waste can be far more complex and involve materials contaminated with extremely dangerous or deadly germs.

As such, medical waste disposal is an extremely serious and important business, meaning that following hospital waste management guidelines are crucial. The slightest failure of medical waste disposal can lead to patients or staff getting sick. It can also expose hospitals to significant legal liability. All hospitals should look at medical waste disposal as an investment. Handling this area correctly ensures that patients are protected, legal exposure is limited, and costs are reduced.

When determining hospital waste management, hospitals must safely dispose of their medical waste. They also must do so in a manner compliant with local, state, and federal guidelines. Indeed, the regulations in this area are deeply complex, and it can be very easy to miss specific regulations. Hospitals must adhere to various confusing and sometimes conflicting policy solutions when disposing of medical waste. Furthermore, it is not enough for hospitals to operate within the parameters set by the law: They also have to maintain extensive paperwork confirming such adherence. Regulatory compliance is often a field in and of itself, and hospitals need to ensure that any waste management vendor they use maintains the necessary records.

It is also worth noting that hospital waste management has a new challenge: COVID-19. In many cases, the COVID-19 pandemic – and subsequent waves of the disease – added additional burdens to hospitals and healthcare networks. In some instances, hospitals found that their existing waste management relationships needed to be improved to manage the major increase in medical waste produced. As such, many hospitals found the need to increase flexibility within their waste management products – even if that meant paying more for these services.

This information drives back to a fundamental point: Waste management is crucial in any hospital facility. Ensuring proper waste management can keep costs down, protect the working conditions of the hospital, and avoid costly governmental fines and penalties. However, finding the right solution to waste management needs can be extremely complicated, particularly if the healthcare network needs to have adequate experience or expertise in this area.

At Valify, we work with your organization to develop a data-driven approach to share hospital services, including waste management. We can work with your organization to identify your needs and ensure you use waste management services that fit your needs. We can also help you find adjustable waste management services and will ensure you save money while executing your critical healthcare duties.

Challenges Of Waste Management For Hospitals

Hospitals and healthcare organizations need proper hospital waste management protocol to avoid serious legal and operational challenges. Challenges of waste management for hospitals include:

• Ensuring that different forms of medical waste are being treated and disposed of at a level that meets that waste’s medical and financial needs.
• Ensure all staff is familiar with what healthcare waste is and how it can be disposed of.
• If any products need to be recycled or reused, that waste must be appropriately sterilized and meet necessary medical and legal standards.
• Having adequate on-site facilities for disposal, including appropriate staff training, equipment, and storage.
• Ensuring appropriate transportation and disposal of any medical waste managed off-site.
• Segregating waste at the source for any hospital waste examples, thus minimizing risk to hospital staff and patients.

Fortunately, while these medical waste disposal examples may be evolving, at their core, the challenge of healthcare waste management has been the same for hospitals for 100s of years: Hospitals must be able to engage in medical waste disposal appropriately. Thankfully, there are many ways to do that.

• Hospitals must create a comprehensive plan that inventory all sources and types of medical waste they produce. From there, hospitals should produce a waste management plan that lists how waste will be disposed of.
• Develop and create the appropriate on-site facilities that allow waste to be remedied and disposed of. Hospitals can minimize transportation risks and reduce costs by engaging in on-site disposal.
• If unable to dispose of waste on-site, hospitals must create methods to transport and dispose of the medical waste off-site. However, this movement of medical waste creates an entirely new set of challenges for hospitals, which must now ensure that medical waste can be properly identified and transported off their facilities.

It is worth noting that many hospitals engage, in some way, with a third-party contractor as part of their medical waste disposal efforts. These third parties can help hospitals determine the following:

• What health care waste is, how dangerous it may be, and how it can be disposed of.
• The safest and most cost-effective way of disposing of medical waste.
• What governmental regulations apply to this specific disposal method, and what paperwork requirements must be met to ensure the appropriate disposal of medical waste.
• The most flexible possible contract that can fit a hospital’s needs. Third-party contractors may charge by various metrics, including total trips, total waste disposed, records that need to be retained, and more. Each hospital will have different needs, and a hospital should find a third-party vendor that can best help them meet their individual needs.

In this instance, one of the real challenges for hospitals is ensuring they get the highest quality waste disposal service at the most affordable price possible. In many instances, this can be a real challenge, as hospitals have to find services that are affordable, flexible, and of the highest quality. Identifying these services and negotiating a fair price for waste disposal can take extensive time. Fortunately, hospitals have many potential ways to find the best possible waste disposal services. In this regard, Valify can be of major assistance.

Methods Of Hospital Waste Management

The medical waste disposal business is deeply complicated, and even the most experienced hospitals may struggle to manage medical waste recycling, find appropriate hospital waste disposal methods, and ensure the adequacy of their medical waste pickup. In instances like that, many hospitals have found that working with a third-party contractor can help them better identify appropriate methods of hospital waste management and ensure they can best dispose of their medical waste.

If your hospital wants to identify the best third-party vendor to help you with your medical waste disposal needs, Valify is here to help.

At Valify, we understand the significant challenges of waste disposal to hospitals. We also know that you need waste disposal solutions of the highest quality and most affordable price. We have developed solutions to help you identify appropriate third-party vendors to meet your needs and ensure you get the best possible waste disposal services.

Our data-driven system has the most up-to-date information on vendors in your area. Valify incorporates data points from more than 1,400 hospitals nationwide, totaling $460 billion in total spending. We use this information to get you the most relevant data, helping you quickly and painlessly find the most appropriate vendors to meet your medical disposal needs and do so at the most affordable price.

However, we also understand that not everything is about finding the least expensive data. Our content-rich database has a slew of other metrics you can rely on to determine what best fits your needs, including the geography of the vendor, experience, total waste disposed of, and flexibility of potential contracts. All of this information combines to make for the most comprehensive possible sourcing as your hospital attempts to select the most beneficial vendor for your waste disposal needs.

At Valify, we also understand the intricacies of working with third-party vendors. For example, waste disposal can be a deeply complex business. Some weeks, you may dispose of significantly less waste than usual. Other weeks – like during flu season or after a medical trauma – you may have much more. To that end, you need a system to handle your fluctuating needs. At Valify, we have developed a system that can auto-track your utilization, giving you a complex and broad-based view of how you use these third-party services.

Lastly, our system updates on a second-by-second basis. In an area as important (and potentially as costly) as medical waste, this up-to-the-second system can ensure you have all the information you need to make the best decisions about your service utilization. Our system allows you to track and monitor your goals, ensuring you stay within established quotas. You can also use our platform to monitor the quality of your data, make sure that all utilization has been approved, and proactively identify potential unauthorized use.

Ready to take your next steps? Contact Valify today and learn more about how we can help you navigate the complicated world of medical waste disposal and ensure you can dispose of all your medical waste appropriately.