From the Canadian Medical Association Journal another one of those areas like the ridiculous attempts to green the military, where I think most people don’t give a rats patootie about whether they are getting “green care” or not. In the case of the military, we want an effective offense, one that effectively neutralizes or kills the enemy. In the case of surgical procedures, we want an effective offense, one that effectively neutralizes or kills the disease. I don’t need nor care for a twisty bulb, or green bio jet fuel, green packaging, or whatever it might be in either situation. I want want is most effective. They are concerned about medical waste, that’s fine, as we’ve seen with much of the green revolution, haste makes waste, so I hope hospitals don’t try to put political correctness before effectiveness.
Greening operating rooms benefit the bottom line and the environment
Efforts to “green” operating rooms can result in cost savings for hospitals and reduce the environmental impact without compromising patient care, argues an analysis published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
“The operating room is a disproportionate contributor to health care waste and represents a high-yield target for change,” writes Dr. Yoan Kagoma, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, Western University, London, Ontario, with coauthors.
Operating rooms produce approximately 20%-33% of all waste in hospitals, and much of this waste is subjected to specialized high-energy processing which is expensive and has negative environmental and health impacts. Figures from 2007 indicate that US health care facilities contributed 8% of total greenhouse gas emissions and disposed of more than 4 billion pounds of waste, making the sector the second-largest producer of landfill waste after the food industry. In 2008, Canadian hospital activities were the second most energy-intensive activity, consuming the energy of 440 000 homes.
“In fact, a single operation may produce more waste than a family of four produces in a week,” state the authors.
“Operating rooms pose a particular challenge to waste management because of the need for absolute sterility,” write the authors. “Fortunately, technologies and waste-reduction strategies have emerged that satisfy the ‘triple bottom line’ (people, planet and profits), by reducing health care costs and environmental effects without compromising patient care.”
Principles for greening operating rooms include:
- Separating waste into normal waste and biohazard or medical waste streams, as the latter requires high-energy processing, and training staff to differentiate. An estimated 50%-80% of normal waste is disposed of as hazardous waste.
- Investing in closed collection systems to discharge liquid waste into sanitary sewers, which reduces the amount of waste needing high-energy treatment.
- Using smart monitors to reduce energy use when operating rooms are vacant.
- Partnering with medical equipment companies to promote greener packaging; a major contributor to waste is plastic packaging.
- Donating unused equipment to developing countries.
- Reprocessing single-use devices to make them suitable for reuse.
- Exploring alternative disposal methods to incineration, which is responsible for significant emissions of dioxin and furan in Canada.
- Creating environmental stewardship staff teams to promote and coordinate greening activities.
“At a time when Canadian hospitals and health care personnel are often working above capacity, one may argue there is little room for greening efforts,” write the authors. “However, in an effort to cut costs, many health care facilities are being asked to improve efficiency. Our analysis has shown that greening initiatives in the operating room are easily implemented, require low capital investment, have a short payback period and can generate substantial cost savings.”
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In the good ol’ days, syringes were made of metal and glass and instruments were of fine steel. EVERYTHING was recycled through the autoclave. What’s old is new again, eh?
In the good ol’ days, windmills dotted the landscape supplying power where needed. However, I don’t want my surgeon operating in the dark when the wind quits blowing. Sometimes, what’s old should stay old.
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“■Creating environmental stewardship staff teams to promote and coordinate greening activities.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t get to that heart attack patient just now. I’ve got an important Environmental Stewardship Team meeting to attend. Maybe that fellow over there could put his mop in the bucket for a few and have a look while I’m gone.”
These actually seem like decent ideas, its not like they are proposing to run MRIs off of algae, scapels made out of recycled cardboard or surgical rooms lit with skylights. Other than this idea ■Creating environmental stewardship staff teams to promote and coordinate greening activities. Those committtees are magnets for busy bodies, na’er do wells and slackers.
If they are truly serious about reducing waste from operating rooms my suggestion would be to cut down on unnecessary operations – i.e. putting stents in people who aren’t suffering from a heart attack, all gastric bypass surgeries, replacing hips and knees in people on their last legs (no pun intended), etc.
Not only would this cut medical waste but since most of these procedures are done simply because the patients are on Medicare and the taxpayers are paying then we could save a bundle on health care costs as well.
” I want want is most effective. ” Seems to have one “want” too many.
In “The Art of War” Sun Tzu teaches us that the objective of War is to Win, and that ANY conditions on that objective comproomise the ability to Win, and thus increase the risk of losing.
A similar situation holds in the ‘Health Industry.” Any conditions placed upon the objective, which is to heal people, runs the risk of failing to meet that objective.
In War, the alternative to winning is to be avoided at all costs. In Health, the alternative to healing is to be avoided at all costs.
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
What could go wrong?
My all time favorite “greening” of the military …
“…Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, now purchases and uses a non-ozone depleting missile propellant.” http://govpro.com/green/gov_imp_27897/
Target destroyed, earth safe sir!
Well done Sargeant.
Reprocessing single-use devices to make them suitable for reuse.
^^^ The above should be banned, you want to reuse a medical device, buy the reuseable version. There have been too many documented cases of this practice causing issues with infections and sub-optimal outcomes to keep going back to this particular well for savings.
Speaking of costs; The healthcare here in Holland has risen through the roof the past years without the greening of it. No idea what the Canadians pay these days for their healthcare, but i guess it wont get any cheaper with these measures.
When I was a surgeon in practice we had glass IV bottles which could be reused, not plastic bags. We also had cloth drapes and gowns which were washed and sterilized after each use, not paper. Of course paper drapes and gowns are a better barrier than cloth but our risks of HIV and Hepatitis were much less 40 years ago. Retirement is nice.
As a wastewater professional we don’t want blood or waste liquid chemicals/medicines discharged into sanitary sewers. Blood from hospitals is specifically prohibited as it increases the risk of blood born diseases for sewer maintenance personnel. Wastewater treatment plants are not designed to remove medications so these pass on to the receiving waters. Haven’t they heard that pharmaceuticals are supposedly a beg problem in the environment and drinking water supplies?
Some of the initiates make sense, like separating hazardous from normal waste (I wonder how much of a problem this really is) but I got the creepy crawlies at the repurposing of disposable items. One of the major improvements in hospital contagion control was single use items like syringes. Also, reusable syringes need to be resharpened – not always done or done properly. I’m old enough to remember the old glass syringes and reuseable needles. UGH…a dull needle will ruin your day. I also don’t think that there would be much savings as the reuseable stuff had to washed to chemical cleanlyness and then autoclaved, all of which use resources and energy.
Don’t give the U.S. Divider-in-Chief any ideas, Hosers! Our operating rooms are green enough.
Pull My Finger says:
June 4, 2012 at 12:04 pm
“These actually seem like decent ideas, its not like they are proposing to run MRIs off of algae, scapels made out of recycled cardboard or surgical rooms lit with skylights.”
Just wait.
I have a fictionalized account of some European nuns who were present during an early Ebola outbreak. One of the prime ways the outbreak was due to the those very same nuns’ efforts in their little health clinic. They would disinfect their big glass syringes and then use them to inject the next patient in line. The disinfectant didn’t kill the Ebola virus. Isn’t that an example of “repurposing”?
I did talk a doctor into allowing reuse of an item. After he removed the stitches in my finger he was going to throw the small scissors in the trash. I took them home to use around the house.
H.R. says:
June 4, 2012 at 12:01 pm
I’m sorry. I can’t get to that heart attack patient just now. I’ve got an important Environmental Stewardship Team meeting to attend. Maybe that fellow over there could put his mop in the bucket for a few and have a look while I’m gone.”
Okay, I get the joke, but really, that’s not going to happen.
The janitor has his own Environmental Stewardship Team Meeting to attend.
“Figures from 2007 indicate that US health care facilities contributed 8% of total greenhouse gas emissions and disposed of more than 4 billion pounds of waste, making the sector the second-largest producer of landfill waste after the food industry. ”
Apparently the Mafia was excluded from these figures.
It sounds like a joke from the show scrubs. I guess the joke is on us. : (
As long as those “greening initiatives in the operating room” remain strictly secondary to the number one priority of sterility, then, maybe. Otherwise it could be the patients who turn green.
Just reinstate a profit motive and let the hospitals tend to their own needs.
This reminds me of the water free urinals, or something like that. It was a calamity. We got green pee though. 😉
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/06/green-pee-the-daily-bayonet/
When you reuse a single-use medical device in the US, you become a Medical device manufacturer, which means one you assume the manufacturer’s liability and two the boat-loads of paperwork that goes along with being a Medical Device manufacturer. Having thousands of Hospitals doing this paperwork verses a couple manufactures supplying thousands of hospitals seems to me like it would be a huge negative on the greenness scale.
My first thought on reading this was the not the one but TWO releases of Foot and Mouth disease from the Pirbright government lab in the UK that devastated the UK livestock industry (With lots of help from Brussels and the UN OIE) with a direct cost of around £2,100 million ~ compensation to farmers for slaughtered livestock amounting so far to £889 million (claims for each farm culled had averaged £116,000). An array of other items included £195 million spent on cleaning and disinfecting farms, £152 million for the transporting and disposal of carcasses, and £79 million to pay veterinary bills and the cost of blood testing…
A read through the above article and What is Depopulation? on the details of “depopulation procedures” makes me wonder what the government and the United Nations have planned for human disease control.
I really do not want to find out so “greening” hospitals is not what I would call a good idea.
If I ever have the misfortune to have to have a surgical team working on me, I would like them to be concentrating on the job, not the correct receptacle for waste.