Three Santa Clara County hospitals caught dumping untreated medical waste
By Barbara Feder Ostrov
San Jose Mercury News
Santa Clara County officials are investigating how three local hospitals sent untreated medical waste, including partly used bags of human blood, to a San Jose landfill in violation of state law.
Notices of violation were sent today to Kaiser Permanente’s Santa Teresa Hospital and O’Connor Hospital, both in San Jose, and Los Gatos Community Hospital. The county has not yet decided whether they will be fined or otherwise sanctioned, said Nicole Pullman, the county’s hazardous materials program manager.
On seven occasions between April 6 and April 19, the hospitals sent untreated medical waste to the Guadalupe landfill, where workers identified it during a routine check and alerted authorities.
Landfill officials forced the three hospitals to remove about 30 tons of their regular trash that had been contaminated by the untreated medical waste. All had to hire specialized medical waste haulers to remove and treat the waste, an expensive solution.
“My thoughts were, how could this happen?” said Ann Clarkson, a former nurse and current senior environmental health specialist for the county. “This was just incredible. What went wrong?”
Clarkson said she had not heard of any instances of medical waste being improperly dumped at a local landfill for years. For three hospitals to improperly deliver medical waste to the landfill seven times in two weeks seemed unusual, she said.
Kaiser Thrive Exposed would like to personally thank Dr. Geoff Galbraith - Kaiser Permanente Care Management Institute board member; and Vice President, Hawaii Permanente Medical Group, Quality Improvement Management - for inspiring us to create this website. Did we make it into the top 5?
It just nevers stops, does it? Kaiser can’t help but screw up.
It’s a compulsive need that they just seem to have.
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