Company Develops New Medical Waste Disposal System
Thousands of people improperly dispose and unsafely transport needles and blood contaminated materials (i.e. medical waste) everyday, putting a significant number of people at risk. More than one million accidental needlesticks are reported each year, and it is estimated that an additional 66 percent per year also go unreported. These incidents can directly expose people to many different infectious agents, including hepatitis and AIDS.
Medical waste is generated in a variety of forms and in any number of places, for example, in homes of chronically ill patients who dispose of their used syringes in their household garbage, in a restaurant where a waiter cuts himself on a broken glass or in a hotel room where an insulin dependent diabetic guest places a used lancet in the trash.
Solutions do exist. One developed by medical waste disposal company Sharps Compliance Inc. (Houston, TX) is a mail-back medical waste disposal system called Sharps Disposal By Mail. The system is available to small generators of medical waste and includes U.S. Postal approved sharps containers, prepaid U.S. postage and destruction costs of the waste that is in strict compliance with all regulatory requirements.
In this medical waste disposal system, the homecare company or hotel manager orders the system, completes the tracking form and delivers the system to the patient or caregiver in the case of homecare, or to the cleaning staff in the case of the hospitality industry. When the sharps container is full or no longer needed, the container is placed in the pre-paid U.S. postage return box and given to the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal Service then delivers the package directly to a medical waste incinerator. When the waste materials have been destroyed, proof of destruction is mailed back to the purchaser using the tracking form.
Larry Box, director of pharmacy, field and clinical services of Apria Home Care, is currently using the mail-back system in approximately 30 of his offices nationwide. Box states the Sharps mail-back system reduces the incidence rate at which his workers are injured or exposed to medical waste during the disposal and transportation stage. "The process is smooth and easy. The medical waste goes from point A to point B from the patient to the incinerator and we receive the confirmation."
Sharps Compliance Inc. provides a disposal system to be used for home medical care which generates medical waste
For more information: Christie Kaluza, Vollmer Public Relations. Tel: 713-546-2230.