Hospitals aim to resterilize, cut waste

Hospitals are looking for ways to recycle more sterilized medical equipment safely, given rising costs and environmental concerns.

In the March issue of the U.S. journal Academic Medicine, researchers said reprocessing and reusing some medical devices can save hospitals millions without risk to patients.

Hospitals currently toss out items from surgical gowns and towels to expensive ultrasonic cutting tools after a single use. In operating rooms, single-use devices that are taken out of the package must be thrown out because of the risk of contamination.

But resterilizing and retesting items such as the metal tubes that are used to insert instruments, or the compression stockings that fit around legs to prevent blood clots, could safely reduce the amount of waste in hospitals, said Dr. Martin Makary, a surgeon and professor of public health at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Md.

"We found there's absolutely no risk, and there's never been a patient safety event related to reprocessing in all our research," Makary, the study's lead author, said in an interview with CBC Radio.

Government standards are strict on resterilizing medical equipment, the researchers noted.

About 25 per cent of U.S. hospitals used at least one type of reprocessed medical device in 2002, the teamfound.

Reducing waste

The hospitals at Toronto's University Health Network produce almost 10,000 kilograms of garbage a day. The three hospitals Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto General Hospital and Toronto Western Hospital are among 48 across Canada that have started reprocessing some medical devices or instruments.

The hospital network estimated three per cent of single-use medical devices are worth sterilizing and refurbishing.

Some of the instruments cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. Some hospitals senddevices to private companies that clean, recalibrate and test the items before returning them.

"When it comes to reusing devises, it's really an infection-control risk assessment that needs to be done as well as a cost evaluation thing," said Ed Rubinstein, manager of energy and environment for UHN.

UHN reprocesses items because of its commitment to reducing environmental waste.

"We're doing it because we're saving money, [although] we're not saving a lot of money," said Dr. Michael Gardam, director of infection prevention and control at UHN.

In some cases, the costs of reprocessing devices went up or the original cost went down so reprocessing was discontinued, Gardam said.

"What we'd like to see is more reusable devices that have actually been made to be reusable, so that we quit putting junk in landfill."