What your Team needs to know

Just like any other medical facility, surgery centers generate a lot of medical waste and are required to follow federal and state regulations for disposal. Ensuring that everyone on your staff is well trained is key to protecting their safety and remaining compliant. Here are some top considerations:

Types of medical waste

Hospitals and surgery centers produce approximately 2 million tons of medical waste each year and that waste generally falls into four different categories:

• General: This type of waste is not considered hazardous and includes paper and plastic items and waste that can be discarded in the regular trash.
• Hazardous: Hazardous waste is dangerous but usually doesn’t pose a risk of infection to humans. This includes items such as sharps, used and non-used, because they can stick or harm someone. Also in this category is chemotherapy waste and mercury from thermometers, chemicals, solvents, and other similar substances.
• Radioactive: Any waste that contains radioactive material, including radioactive therapies for thallium stress tests, and other nuclear medicine that is used treat certain cancers is included in this category. Also, any Nuclear medicine that uses radiation to diagnose diseases or conditions of specific organs, or to treat them.
• Infectious: Infectious waste includes any item that can pose a risk of infection to humans, animals or the environment such as blood-soaked bandages, sharps waste, surgical waste, human or body parts, cultures, and swabs.

Each of these categories needs to be disposed of in a certain way to ensure that they do not pose a health risk to people or the environment.

Surgical centers must make sure that staff separate and discard all waste materials in the proper place and that they follow mandates of safety. In addition, centers should have their medical waste managed and hauled away by a certified provider and maintain best practices when it comes to storing waste within their facility. This includes having the right size and proper placement of sharps containers, red bags, and other waste bins as well as ensuring these items do not get overfilled. Although regulations vary from state to state, it’s critical for surgery facilities to implement a regular schedule for waste pick up.

All Points Medical Waste provides medical waste disposal services to Martin, St. Lucie, Okeechobee, Indian River, Palm Beach, and Broward Counties. Our family owned and operated business takes great pride in ensuring the safe and secure disposal of your medical waste and provides affordable, reliable and unmatched personalized attention to our clients. To get more information, fill out a quote request or give us a call at 772.600.4885.