Nick Johnson, CEO of Waste Experts, shares the importance of a Medical Waste Review for Healthcare Facilities Owners and Operators.

From a regulated medical waste cost perspective, the number one driver of increased medical waste expense is turnover in skilled and assisted nursing facilities. This is because the majority of regulated medical waste contracts contain the following provisions:

• Automatic Renewal Clauses
• No cap on yearly price increases
• Fee clauses that result in overweight, additional container, and other miscellaneous fees being passed through to the facility.

The American Health Care Association (AHCA) estimated in 2012 that the median turnover rate for all employees in skilled nursing was 43.9%. For a skilled nursing home operator with fifty locations, this means that one can expect over the course of any given year to have twenty-one positions at the executive director position turn over.

Taking this a step further, we can assume this means that there are twenty-one medical waste agreements that are not being reviewed to ensure that they are not automatically extending themselves. The reason that they are not being reviewed is because the replacement executive director has to deal with budgeting, staffing issues, employee issues, patient/resident issues, and a whole host of other daily operations. Additionally, even if the replacement executive director wanted to review the existing agreement, they may not know where to locate it.

If the previous executive director signed a five year agreement, with a five year automatic renewal clause, this particular site has the potential to be locked into the same contract for ten years! Couple that with the fact that most contracts allow an annual price increase of 18%, one can be looking at a five year price increase of 72%, or, if the agreement renews itself, an increase of 162% over ten years! This is why we say that turnover is the number one driver of regulated medical waste expense.

The expert staff at Waste Experts can help mitigate the expense of high turnover with respect to regulated medical waste by taking the following steps on your behalf.

• Gather all contracts from medical waste vendors for all facilities.
• Track automatic renewal clauses, and make sure they are cancelled in the appropriate window.
• Review invoices to make sure that fees are being charged in accordance with existing agreements.
• Use our group purchasing power of over 6500 client locations to drive your medical waste expenses down.

We can do this because we have the time and resources to devote to the review and management of your regulated medical waste agreements. Your staff can focus on making your money, while the staff at waste experts focuses on saving you money. Visit us at to find out more and to contact us for a no obligation review of your medical waste expenses.