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Is everyone in your medical facility or pharmacy familiar with the laws regarding pharmaceutical waste management and disposal processes? While most pharmaceutical waste is generated by hospitals and pharmacies, pharmaceutical waste in any healthcare scenario presents a unique set of challenges due to the complexity of its varied waste stream and evolving understanding of its impact on human health and the environment.
Medical waste management entails so many rules and protocols you must follow, and under that umbrella, hospital waste management is certainly no exception. Creating and following a best practices plan for your hospital waste management helps to ensure that you remain in compliance with hospital-specific regulations of your locality, state, and the federal government.
Numerous federal laws on the books determine how certain pharmaceuticals are to be disposed of. Education, training, and documentation are all important aspects of compliant pharmaceutical waste management and disposal.
If your doctor’s office or hospital is a fully functioning clinic, it’s very likely you periodically need to dispose of expired medications and biohazardous waste. When it comes to disposal of expired medications, staff need to follow specific regulations and restrictions regarding such waste and what kinds of medications get disposed of and in what fashion.
If you’re a dentist—or the manager of a dental clinic—it’s understandable if you’ve never heard of something called a “conditionally exempt small quantity generator” (CESQG). But in the eyes of the EPA, that’s very likely you—and what you’re generating is nothing less than hazardous waste.
One of the biggest benefits hazardous waste management companies can offer pharmacies is their expertise on expired medication disposal. Because it is so common for various medications to expire in a pharmacy and require proper disposal, every pharmacy should be fully up to date on the protocol for proper medication disposal (and the consequences for failing to follow that protocol).
ARE YOU MANAGING YOUR PHARMACEUTICAL WASTE DISPOSAL LEGALLY? A pharmaceutical waste must be properly identified, segregated, and managed to meet the dictates of the EPA—and particularly so if it’s considered to be a hazardous waste. Classification parameters for...
The EPA Acting Administrator signed the final rule, titled, “Management Standards for Hazardous Waste Pharmaceuticals and Amendment to the P075 Listing for Nicotine” on December 11, 2018 and it was published in the Federal Register (FR) on February 22, 2019.
Pharmaceutical waste is one waste stream that has historically not been dealt with in the proper manner. Various healthcare facilities have been lax about proper disposal, but regulations (and fines) are only going to get more stringent. It’s important, therefore, that every healthcare facility has a clear, outlined step-by-step plan in place for proper pharmacy waste disposal.
Pharmaceutical waste disposal involves a lot of laws and just as many regulations. If you want your pharmacy to be fully compliant (and, therefore, minimize your chance of getting fined), you need to be organized and diligent about your waste management efforts. A checklist is one simple way to make sure you haven’t neglected any steps. With that in mind, the following is a brief overview of five line items that should appear on your pharmaceutical waste checklist.
