Medical Waste Articles

Managing medical waste is not for the faint of heart . . . and neither is managing a medical office. Your facility’s staff must adhere to strict, sometimes time-consuming medical waste guidelines and regulations while providing the highest level of patient care. You must protect the health of your patients, your employees, and on a larger scale, the community-at-large and the environment. Following best practices in health care delivery, medical waste management, and medical office management can streamline processes and help ensure the best delivery of service in each area.

However, no matter how well your staff follows processes and procedures, mistakes will be made. Handling medical waste can be confusing and your medical office is a fast-paced environment. To help, we’ve compiled a list of common medical office mistakes related to compliance for you to keep as a handy reference. Perhaps sharing these with your staff can jumpstart some helpful conversations related to compliance issues.

Hiring a medical waste service provider doesn’t mean you can surrender responsibility for how your waste is handled. Your medical facility is responsible for its medical waste from the moment it’s generated until the moment it’s rendered harmless and can be recycled or thrown away. Any incident with your medical waste is your organization’s responsibility, even when you’ve contracted with a fully permitted waste service provider. They can make mistakes that result in penalties and fines for your practice.

Things are running smoothly at your medical practice since you’ve conducted compliance training and among other training requirements, your employees know how to correctly categorize and segregate medical waste. However, handling medical waste can be confusing and mistakes can still happen. In fact, some regulations regarding medical waste can be confusing for even the most conscientious employee. We’re sharing a few of the most common mistakes made when separating waste streams. 

Your medical practice staff should know exactly what kinds of medical waste your practice produces and how to properly collect and prepare it for storage and transport. Chemotherapy waste disposal must be carefully managed in order to protect your employees, patients, and community. Chemotherapy can use highly toxic drugs and generates some of the most hazardous medical waste. If disposed of incorrectly, this type of pharmaceutical waste can present the biggest risk to human health and the environment. Knowing what goes in the yellow bin will help ensure proper bulk and trace chemotherapy waste handling.

Your main focus is patient care and making sure things run smoothly in your medical facility to facilitate the highest level of care for your patients. You and your staff need everyday processes and procedures standardized and simplified as much as possible in order to focus on patient care. We’re doing this series of articles to help you prepare your medical waste for pickup and transport. Of course, partnering with a fully certified and permitted medical waste services provider can help you make sure that your practice’s regulated medical waste is handled correctly.

Partnering with a fully certified and permitted medical waste service provider is one of the best ways to ensure that your practice’s regulated medical waste is handled correctly. Properly segregating the waste is an important consideration in preparing, storing, and transporting medical waste. When you categorize medical waste correctly, you isolate each type to ensure that it is managed properly.

As the saying goes, if you don’t know where you’re going, you won’t know when you get there. Every organization needs a strategic plan to guide its efforts and your medical practice is no different — especially when it comes to effectively managing your medical waste. We’re here to help you develop a medical waste management plan to guide your efforts. With a plan, you can insure that your medical practice is following the proper procedures to increase efficiency and maintain compliance. Following, are the general guidelines you should follow when developing a plan to manage your regulated medical waste.

Understanding healthcare waste container labels is key to keeping your medical facility compliant with DOT standards. Each medical waste container has markings that confirm the degree of danger it contains and to determine how it should be handled. Our four step guide will lead you through the proper packaging steps for your facility’s medical waste to ensure safety and compliance.

With the New Year comes goal setting and resolution making. As you look at ways in the coming year to keep things running smoothly at your medical practice, why not make compliance one of your New Year’s resolutions? One way to make sure you maintain compliance is by reviewing your processes and procedures to make sure there are no gaps. Let’s take a look at some new procedures you might want to put in place or use to adapt your existing policies.

We’ve all heard the saying, “Out of sight, out of mind.” And let’s face it, no one wants to think about what could happen in a worst-case scenario. However, it’s important to be educated about the inherent risks in handling medical waste. If you know about the risks involved, you can safeguard against them. You can protect your employees and patients, and yourself. Since personal liability comes into play with regulated medical waste, we’re going to look at some worst-case scenarios and tell you what to do in order to make sure they don’t happen to you or your practice.