Healthcare Best Practices Blog

Do you know your pharmaceutical footprint?

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by Bryan Soltysik, New England Healthcare Account Manager

Much of my time these days is being consumed by trying to understand where pharmaceutical waste management is heading for healthcare. Congress has many proposed regulations that may affect pharmaceutical manufacturers, labeling & disposal requirements, regulatory agency requirements for monitoring (basically you can see my task is challenging and a moving target). More importantly, I've been trying to understand how hospitals and their operations will be impacted if any of these changes take place. Most people today have heard of what a "carbon footprint" is....however is anyone looking at what your "pharmaceutical footprint" looks like.

A colleague of mine in Baltimore (Brett Skinner) emailed the following article to me that made me look at hospital and research operations more broadly.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/44528/title/Hospitals_Drug_Problem

So here is one more area to consider.....animal research bedding. Most major research institutions have an animal research component where the bedding material is changed often, sometimes daily. So the animal is being subjected to various tests often involving new drugs or pharmaceuticals for various disease cures. The animal excretes the said new drug and the animal bedding is discarded. Some facilities do autoclave the bedding prior to disposal which takes care of the biological component....but what about the pharmaceutical component? Do you know where your pharmaceutical contaminated animal bedding is being disposed of?