Under-managing medical waste is easy to do. Sure, there are the suggested methods that every healthcare facility follows in order to comply with government standards. But is that enough?
As a healthcare facility, your community trusts you to protect their health, cure diseases, and save their lives.
You cannot meet these needs if your hospital waste management system is lacking key essentials. Here are some great tips for producing an effective hospital waste management program.
Hospital Waste Management Programs Should Be Comprehensive
With healing, comes medical waste. It’s the natural order of this process. The same can be said with trust. By earning your community’s trust and respect, you also acquire a substantial amount of responsibility and accountability.
That’s why your hospital waste management program must be all-encompassing. Not only must you recognize what needs to be disposed, but it ALL must be disposed of carefully and appropriately.
Without doing so, you run the risk of jeopardizing the health of everyone who comes in contact with your facility. In fact, it is reported that of all hospital waste generated, at least 20% entails risk of infection, trauma, or radiation exposure.
That’s a lot of additional lives you will be held accountable for if your current health waste management system fails in any way. It won’t be your medical waste company’s or a specific employee’s fault, but the blame will fall on you as the healthcare facility.
Educate Your Employees Thoroughly
Though many healthcare facilities choose to outsource their medical waste disposal to medical waste companies, it is STILL always in your best interest to make sure every employee, regardless of their position, is familiar with appropriate disposal methods for all waste generated in your facility.
This could mean extensive pre-job training, running facility-wide seminars, or hosting departmental classes explaining proper disposal procedures.
Why is this important? Because negligence is cited as one of the top causes of medical exposure.
By educating your employees on the associated risks of improper disposal as well as the appropriate means of disposal, you can combat negligence and ignorance all at once!
Don’t Forget Paper & E-Waste
Compromised data is no joke. Sony, and other big names around the world, has learned this lesson the hard way.
Fortunately, as a healthcare facility, you can easily secure your employees’ and patients’ information by supplementing your traditional medical waste management with a paper and e-waste disposal plan. This can include document shredding, hard drive disposal, proper electronic disposal, and cyber data elimination.
With technology advancing at rapid speed and identity theft/data theft on the rise, you can never be too careful. Implementing hospital waste management that includes both medical waste disposal AND e-waste/paper disposal is always recommended.
If you are unsure of the proper methods to dispose of your e-waste or documents, always make sure to consult with your local medical waste company to ensure your method is 100% government compliant.
