Dartmouth-Hitchcock joins GOR Initiative to help reduce environmental impact of country's operating rooms

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center has joined the Greening the Operating Room (GOR) Initiative, Practice Greenhealth's broad coalition that plans to develop a sweeping and prescriptive path to green the country's operating rooms. The GOR Initiative was launched in 2010 to raise awareness of the huge contribution made by operating rooms to a hospital's waste stream, which can produce 20- 30 percent of a hospital's total waste.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock is endorsing this collaborative effort of forward-thinking hospitals, manufacturers, and related stakeholders, under the auspices of Practice Greenhealth, to develop a best practices guidance document, enhanced analytical tools and a physicians group to help reduce the environmental impact of the nation's operating rooms. GOR will also help hospitals reduce costs, increase quality and improve worker and patient safety.

"We're proud of our OR greening achievements to date, glad to be contributing to a national effort, and anxious to learn from others' successes so we can do even better in this important area of sustainability," said John Leigh, Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Manager of Waste & Recycling Programs. "It ties back to our core goals and responsibilities, since we recognize very clearly that a healthy population requires a healthy environment."

Operating rooms are some of the most resource-intensive and waste-generating areas of a hospital. A recent study estimated supply costs of operating rooms could eat up as much as 56 percent of total operating room budgets, dwarfing salary costs at which run about 35 percent of total operating room budgets. In addition to producing between 20 to 30 percent of a hospital's total waste volume, much of the waste disposed from operating rooms is thrown out as regulated medical waste, which costs between 10 and 15 times more in disposal fees than regular waste. Much of this waste could be disposed outside of the regulated medical waste stream. In addition, most operating room supplies are thrown out after one use, even though re-use may be an option.

Among DHMC's greening activities in the operating room are the following:

• Single-Use Device (SUD) Reprocessing
• Operating Room Kit Formulation
• Fluid Waste Management Systems
• LED Lighting
• Regulated Medical Waste (RMW) Minimization/Segregation
• Substitution of Reusable Hard Cases for Blue Sterile Wrap
• Recycling of Medical Plastics
• Medical Equipment and Supplies Donation

"We are so pleased to be able to work with Dartmouth-Hitchcock on this very important initiative," said Bob Jarboe, Executive Vice President of Business Development for Practice Greenhealth. "Each of the hospital participants brings a great deal of experience and expertise in reducing operating room impacts and costs to the table."