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Things to Consider When Hiring a Medical Waste Disposal Service. If you’re the administrator of a healthcare facility, medical office, or another establishment that produces biohazardous waste, you know how important it is to have a reliable medical waste disposal service in place. Improperly handled medical waste can pose serious risks to your employees, patients, and the environment. These materials must be disposed of properly, in accordance with state regulations and federal standards.
To help you make the right decision about which service to hire moving forward, we’ve compiled this list of considerations before hiring a medical waste disposal company.
When it comes to hiring a medical waste disposal company, the first thing to consider is the type of company you are working with. It may surprise you to find out not all medical waste disposal companies are created equal, a few examples are lead generation companies, brokers, haulers, or some mix of those.
When it comes to medical waste the only type of company you should consider is the company that can provide the service from start to finish.
This means you contract directly with the company that actually does the medical waste pickup from your facility, with their direct employees, in their company branded trucks, and can treat most of your medical waste at their own processing plants. This company is able to provide you with the best services at the best prices because thy own the entire process. At Bio-MED we own the process from cradle-to-grave, we contract with you, we send our direct employees, in our company owned vehicles to pick up your medical waste, we process of most of your medical waste in our own treatment plants.
Another thing to consider is who will be doing the work. You want to make sure that the people collecting and disposing of your medical waste are the people your facility contracted with and are fully trained and certified. Find out if your service provider uses employees or outside contractors to collect and transport your waste. If they’re using outside contractors, you are probably going to pay more, now you have two companies making profit from your bill. It’s also important to find out what types of training and certifications the companies’ personnel have. These certifications help to ensure that your waste is handled properly and that the team members are knowledgeable about how to do it safely and responsibly.
Another thing to consider is what type of services are included in your contract. You want to make sure that your contract covers the waste your facility generates onsite. Otherwise, you could be forced to find another company to handle some portion of your medical waste stream. For example, if you’re generating trace chemo waste, it’s important to make sure the medical waste disposal company is equipped to collect and transport that waste offsite for proper disposal. If you’re generating other waste outside of the normal biohazardous materials such as blood, bodily fluids, and other residuals, you also want to make sure that your contract covers the disposal of those materials. Some medical waste disposal companies offer additional services, such as shredding and OSHA compliance training, you can often get a better deal by bundling all these services, if your facility requires them.
The most important thing to figure out when hiring a medical waste disposal company is, to find out what type of company you are speaking with. To help with this task we have complied a list of the company types you may encounter when looking for a vendor.
A Lead Generation Company. This company has no vested interest in your business they simply want to collect as much information as they can about your needs and sell that information to other companies.
A Broker. This type of company make money from reselling your service, they will contract with you at a higher price and find a medical waste company that will do it for a lower price. Now you are paying two companies for one service.
A Hauler. A hauler is a medical waste company that hauls or moves the medical waste from your facility to a treatment facility. This is the first type of company that actually does some of the work they haul. They do not treat the waste, so they are still paying another company to treat the waste.
A Combination of Above. in some cases, you will find a hauler who services a small to mid-sized market. That will market to areas they do not service directly and then find another hauler to do the work. In a sense two companies making money from your one bill.
A Full-Service Medical Waste Disposal Company. This type of company owns the entire process of your medical waste disposal, start to finish. They hire and train their own drivers, they equip their own branded trucks to safely haul medical waste, they own the treatment plants that destroy your medical waste. A company that has its own treatment plants has more regulations than a company that simply hauls the waste, hence, they are regulated more, and more often giving you peace of mind your waste is being treated properly.
In instances where the waste must be incinerated, it may have to take that waste to an incinerator plant.
Here at Bio-MED we are a full service medical waste disposal company. Our trained employees will come to your facility to pick up your medical waste, in our company owned and equipped medical waste trucks, that brings the waste back to our own medical waste treatment plant, where it is safely destroyed.
