Green Initiative: Mercy Health system works to reduce trash going to landfills

FORT SCOTT, Kan. -- In just nine months, the Sisters of Mercy Health System -- a group of 30 hospitals in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma -- has already saved nearly $800,000 and diverted more than 20,000 pounds of waste from local landfills.

And by all estimates, Mercy stands to save $2 million annually and about 30 tons from landfills once all facilities are at full speed with a new green initiative that involves reprocessing medical devices, company officials said.

"The health industry is second only to the food industry in contributing to our nation's landfills," Mercy President and CEO Lynn Britton said. "Not only is Mercy impacting our environment by reprocessing medical devices, we are putting the savings back into patient care. This is just one of Mercy's strategies to reduce health care costs while increasing the quality of patient care."

Following stringent guidelines set by the United States Food and Drug Administration, hospitals across the country are beginning to revisit reprocessing devices such as surgical scissors, drills, and many opened but unused items. For years, U.S. hospitals have reprocessed devices in-house or through outside vendors but over time, with a more disposable society, landfills are overflowing, according to a news release.

According to a March 2010 study published in the Association of American Medical Colleges journal, devices that are properly reprocessed "do not present at increased health risk when compared with new, non-processed devices."

"Now, to ensure safety and efficiency, as well as comply with FDA regulations, Mercy is partnering with a leading single outside vendor which disassembles, cleans, inspects, certifies, sterilizes and restores devices to manufacturer specifications and then returns items to Mercy facilities," Mercy Operational Support Services Director Stacy Howard said. "They meticulously track how many times each device has been processed and recycle them when they need to be retired."

Along with reprocessing, the following are other ways Mercy is going green:

* Mercy Medical Center in Rogers, Ark., is one of only 21 hospitals in the country currently certified by Energy Star, meaning it uses less energy, is less expensive to operate, and causes fewer greenhouse gas emissions than its peers, according to EPA standards.

* Mercy Data Center in Washington, Mo., opening this summer, was designed to be compliant with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design -- the standard for green building design. Of the 255 tons of steel used to build the center, 100 percent came from recycled sources.

* St. John's Mercy Medical Center in St. Louis, Mo., will open a new patient tower this summer using light harvesting.

Many Mercy facilities are also switching to green cleaning chemicals, reducing utility costs, doing away with water bottles and recycling everything from cardboard to batteries.

"No snowflake ever feels responsible for the avalanche but we are all responsible for this planet," Sisters of Mercy Health Ministry Liaison Sister Mary Roch Rocklage said. "Across Mercy, our 36,000 coworkers are impacting our communities by taking care of the planet God gifted us."