Association of Medical Device Reprocessing President Daniel Vukelich was featured in Real World Healthcare today in an article titled “Going Green Saves Green.” The article discusses how sustainability and “green” options are effective cost savings measures for hospitals and healthcare organizations.
In August 2012, Forbes ran an article by Richard Crespin entitled, If Sustainability Costs You More, You’re Doing it Wrong. Never before has this been more true for health care providers than it is right now. In fact, data shows that if hospitals put in place certain green initiatives, they would save a lot more green – to the tune of more than$15 billion over the next 10 years. In this era of shrinking budgets, escalating health care costs, and the growing problem of medical waste, isn’t it about time that all hospitals explore these sustainable options?
One of the initiatives considered was the reprocessing of select “single-use” medical devices (SUD). In the study, hospitals contracted with an FDA-regulated medical device re-processor, which are firms that specialize in collecting medical devices – decontaminating, cleaning, repairing, and remanufacturing the devices for resale back to hospitals. Extrapolating on the data collected, the researchers estimate that “hospitals’ cost savings over five years was about $57 per procedure and if hospitals nationwide adopted SUD reprocessing, cost savings would be $540 million annually, or $2.7 billion over five years.”
That’s billion with a “b,” it does not require any up-front hospital capital investment to get started, and is proven to provide patients with the same standard of care.
Read the full article here