Healthcare waste is an eco-challenge

Not all "green" choices are free of health consequences, and a new report reminds us that the opposite is also true: Health care can have a massive environmental impact. This is something that Justmeans readers have noted in the past, but the scale of unnecessary waste in healthcare is astounding, and solutions are readily available.

As an industry, health care is the second leading contributor to landfills in the US, second only to the food industry. What types of material are being tossed? Well much of it, as you can imagine, is pretty icky and needs to be disposed of quickly and appropriately: Stuff that's been in contact with human fluids, bandage wrappings, needles, etc And obviously tissue, bone and fluid is not something that should linger. But a lot of other stuff that's thrown out could be cleaned and recycled, without any risk to future patients. These include surgical gowns, certain cutting instruments, and equipment used for minimally invasive (laproscopic) surgery.

In many cases, devices that have little or no risk of transmitting disease, such as blood-oxygen meters that clip to your finger, or compression sleeves are simply thrown out after a single use instead of being recycled. Its not just a matter of saving the waste, in some cases hospitals have the option of choosing to buy reusable or disposable equipment. Not only does "recycle and reuse" make environmental sense, it makes cents-sense as well. Banner Health in Phoenix Arizona, for example, saved $1.5 million in a single year by reusing equipment that posed no risk to staff or patients.

Martin Makary, MD, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and author of a new report calling for more eco (as in ecological and economic) friendly hospital procurement practices admits that there is a bit of a public relations concern: How do you convince patients that its OK for their surgeon, doctor, or nurse to use equipment that's been used on some other patient. "These reprocessed devices are as good as new," Makary says, "since the testing standards for reuse are impeccable and there have been no patient safety problems in our analysis." It's not nearly as radical concept as the recycling of actual implantable devices, such as pacemakers, which has been studied and promoted by others.

Keeping an eye on the life cycle costs of health care is probably a new concept, but just as the discipline of public health seeks to deter diseases' ravages before they strike, health care should be sure that the byproducts of their output aren't contributing to future environmental health problems in the communities they serve.

Photo credit: The author