The disposal of instruments is a tricky issue for GPs and other healthcare providers, especially under new sterilisation rules. Single use, disposable, instruments can provide the answer.
Every Practice Manager will want to make their Practice as environmentally friendly as possible, but the disposal of used medical instruments can be a particularly challenging consideration.
Whilst the decision on whether to sterilise surgical instruments or to use disposable instrument and procedure packs has very real cost implications, as of 31 March, all surgical instruments in use must comply with the Medical Devices Directive.
Complying with the Directive rules requires Practices to use single-use instruments, or to send their re-usable surgical instruments to a fully accredited sterile services department. The Healthcare Commission has responsibility to ensure standards are met.
Achieving compliance with sterile services accreditation is not going to be cost-effective or practical for anything but the largest of Practices. For example, to meet its requirements costs £4,000, plus £3,500 each year to operate. These include regularly testing the sterilising machine, sterile water to fill it up each day and the time and training of Practice staff. And the Practice retains all the risks of processing the instruments.
This leaves Practices with the option of moving to single-use, disposable, instruments and, for those items not available as single use, contacting their primary care organisation (PCO) to find out what decontamination services there are locally.
Regional decontamination centres are gradually coming on line but for many areas there is still no service. And where a service is present, in many cases local sterilisation units can not cope with any extra capacity.
Single use, disposable, instruments can be disposed of with your other clinical waste, in the sharps clinical waste at a cost of £500 to £1,500 per tonne. With single instruments being light, this generally works out to less than a penny for each item.
In comparison, for CSSD services, because instruments must be cleaned as soon as possible, you will need a weekly collection and delivery service, which adds to your costs and the environmental impact. Then, decontamination uses energy to produce high pressure steam at 134oC and needs chemicals and detergents in the process.
In short, the arguments for the adoption of single use, disposable, instruments are increasing all the time.
Can you afford to be left behind?
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