Waste in Surgery

Hospital operational rooms waste millions of dollars a year in disposable supplies. Commonly wasted supplies are low-cost items like sponges, gloves, and sutures. But, the most costly waste comes from higher-cost supplies that are used less often like screws and sealants. In the US, the operating rooms produce more than 2,000 tons of waste per day, most of which are from disposable medical supplies. It has a detrimental effect not only on our environment but at the same time imparts a heavy toll on health care economics. In a study conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, data was collected about the waste in the operating room (OR) of the hospital’s neurology department. It was found that an average of $968 worth of disposable medical supplies from the operating room was wasted per procedure. Using this data, it can be estimated that the waste amounts to $2.9 million per year. The average total cost of those procedures ranged from $8,400 to $9,600, and about 13% of the total surgical cost was spent on unused or wasted supplies. However, there is a large variation when it comes to the amount of waste produced by a procedure. Unused supply waste was more common in tumor procedures, at 19.7%, compared to spinal cases, which was at 7.18%. 

In the current era, hospitals routinely dispose of these by using costly autoclaves, microwave sterilization systems, and chemical disinfection. In addition, many hospitals use incineration and dumping of waste into landfills. These disposal methods can be associated with several environmental and public health concerns. The healthcare system with its enormous medical waste leaves a large carbon footprint. However, when researching the waste created from surgeries, there were a few complications that made it harder to come up with a long-lasting and effective solution. It was concluded that waste is very difficult to control because it is hard to predict the supplies a surgeon may need for a procedure, particularly a complicated one. 

Despite these complications, researchers have been trying to find a suitable solution for the waste problem. A simple solution to jumpstart the process of reducing the waste created from surgeries is to promote price transparency. By showing the doctors the median surgical supply cost for each type of operation performed in the prior month, it will help the doctors understand the need for cost reduction. Additionally, in order to reduce waste, nurses and technicians should talk with doctors to find out what supplies they prefer to use. This way, the right supplies can be set out from the beginning. When this method was tested, it was proven to be very advantageous for the doctor and the environment because only the supplies that were taken out were used. Other solutions to reduce the waste was for hospitals to put out bins to collect usable discards. These supplies can be sent to facilities in need, such as the prison system and health services in developing nations. Many of these places have trouble keeping supplies in stock and are willing to take donations. Through this type of recycling program, hospitals can cut down on supply waste and help other institutions provide quality patient care. 

Currently, a common practice of helping reduce the amount of waste created in hospitals is to reprocess single-use medical devices as well as PPE. Especially in the COVID environment, there is a lot of personal protective equipment (PPE) being used daily in hospitals, so there is a lot of waste being created daily. Beginning to reprocess the masks, gowns, and shields will greatly help reduce the amount of waste created throughout the hospital. Overall, medical supply waste is a huge and relatively unnoticed problem in the healthcare system. By adopting conservative practices, communicating more, and donating viable discards, the healthcare field will see significant savings and will be able to contribute more to better overall patient treatment.

References:

https://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20160907/NEWS/160909935/hospital-ors-may-waste-millions-a-year-in-disposable-medical-supplies.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/406778.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3430187/.

https://hbr.org/2011/09/how-to-solve-the-cost-crisis-in-health-care