Clinical Waste Audit

By Hannah Lambalot | Categories: | Comments Off on Clinical Waste Audit

This program began with the goal to perform a Clinical Waste Audit to understand St. Luke’s “waste” categorizations, weights, and types. This data then can be used to inform waste reduction, reprocessing, and recycling projects. In the long term, this information can work in tandem with an implemented software program to capture all utility data into a database and set a baseline on water, waste, and energy consumption; this data can help reduce costs and allocate utilities more efficiently.

Stephanie Wicks was hired as the environmental sustainability manager to begin working on these types of projects.

This type of work is best done by hospital staff with guidance from subject matter experts or tools to assist in the process. This program involved a wide range of hospital staff: infection prevention, nursing management, physicians, environmental services, building services, hospital administration, information technology, employee safety, pharmacy management, and governance. In addition to internal hospital staff, the program team is working with a Sustainability Leader Coalition within the City of Boise and maintaining a relationship with the City of Boise leadership.

St. Luke’s Health System has developed a Clinical Waste Audit Playbook to be disseminated across the association to assist other hospitals on “How to Perform a Clinical Waste Audit.” This deliverable is an immediate cost-save for any hospital looking to engage in this arena, as it prevents the need to hire an outside consultant and therefore saves tens of thousands of dollars (when investing in this space, St. Luke’s received a quote of $85,000 for the consultant on this project). This program also generated hospital-wide engagement and has created opportunities for the departments generating waste to work on identifying the difficult processes/waste generating flow areas.