The San Francisco Chronicle: Making a dent in medical waste (07/06/10):
In a commentary published in March in Academic Medicine, Dr. Martin Makary, a gastrointestinal surgeon, and colleagues at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine called for more medical centers to “go green” by recycling disposable single-use medical devices. Several reprocessing companies take certain disposables – like orthopedic drill bits and heart-monitoring catheters – and clean, recalibrate, repackage and resterilize them, then sell them back to hospitals and medical suppliers for 40 to 60 percent of the price of new ones.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/05/MNV61E9SA4.DTL#ixzz0sx5813n9