CMS and Joint Commission have made many policies that cause excessive waste in the healthcare industry. Particularly with medications, we are required to treat multidose vials as single dose and discard so much medication unnecessarily. A solution to satisfy safe delivery of medications without wasting unnecessarily would be to use predrawn syringes of medications (particularly in the Operating Room setting). Currently some medications are already in premade syringes, but usually hospitals complain about the cost.
Great idea. Americans would be SHOCKED by the amount of waste in the medical setting. As a medical device rep, who covered cases in the OR, I also saw this first hand. Reducing waste is not only financially beneficial but would positively impact the environment.
1 Like
Seriously! The amount of plastic that’s tossed in regular trash is ridiculous!