Wagering on a sewer thing: How are you managing wastes during an emergency?

Burn, bury, or dump it—apparently there is madness in the method—and your plan needs to reflect the methodologies.

I recognize that, particularly with newly introduced requirements, guidelines, etc., the rarified elements that we collectively (if not quite lovingly) refer to as “surveyor interpretation” are at their most diverse, maddening, arbitrary, capricious, and on and on and on. That said, there is one element relating to the recent CMS update relative to emergency preparedness that I touched upon in the blog a couple of weeks ago , but did not devote a lot of discussion time to it. And that element relates to waste management during an emergency response.

During CMS surveys as recent as March 2019, there has been much discussion about the particulars of how folks are poised to manage the various and sundry waste products generated by/through normal hospital operations, particularly during a prolonged emergency response condition. And while I can’t say I saw this coming (at least not in the first wave of scrutiny), it does appear that the CMSers (or at least some of ’em) are looking for fairly detailed planning in this regard: collection, holding/storage, short-term disposal, long-term disposal, pharmaceutical wastes, chemical wastes, etc. , inclusive of second and third-level backup plans. I suppose, like with just about anything and everything you could name, there is always the potential for external disruption that constricts the ability to remove waste materials from our campuses. And, while I think we tend to focus our preparatory activities on sustaining normal operations, it would seem that there might be some vulnerability relating getting rid of the stuffs that are the result of those normal operations.

At this point, I’m not entirely certain if the focus is more to the consultative than the compliance-related approach—the topic was discussed during survey, but no report has been issued as of this writing (if I hear more, I will certainly let you know), so it’s anybody’s guess. But I do know that these things tend to spread pretty quickly in the field, so it certainly wouldn’t hurt to kick the tires of your waste processes during your next emergency response exercise.

About the Author: Steve MacArthur is a safety consultant with The Greeley Company in Danvers, Mass. He brings more than 30 years of healthcare management and consulting experience to his work with hospitals, physician offices, and ambulatory care facilities across the country. He is also a contributing editor for Healthcare Safety Leader. Contact Steve at stevemacsafetyspace@gmail.com.