Study lists success factors to sustainable hospital waste mgmt

IIT Delhi has found 10 factors to consider in selecting an HCW firm.

IIT Delhi Department of Management Studies has released a research paper titled Selection of Healthcare Waste Disposal Firms Using a Multi-Method approach.

The study showed hospitals, which often encounters difficulty in disposing of their healthcare waste (HCW) hygienically and sustainably, can utilize a decision support framework proposed in the paper.

"This study aims to propose a hybrid multi-criteria decision support framework integrated with a mathematical model to tackle the issue of safe disposal of hazardous and infectious healthcare waste," said research lead Surya Prakash Singh.

Here are the ten key success factors from literature and field survey for selecting the best healthcare waste disposal firm, enumerated in the study:

• Manpower of a particular outsourcing firm
• Cases filed in a court of law against the HCW outsourcing firm
• The cost of providing services by an outsourcing firm to a particular hospital
• The reputation of existing clients of HCW outsourcing firm
• The number of years for which an outsourcing firm has been functional
• The technology available with an outsourcing firm for disposal and recycling of HCW
• HCW collection instruments and vehicles available with outsourcing firm
• Training and awareness programs about HCW provided to housekeeping staff and patients
• Capacity planning for recycling of HCW collected by outsourcing firm
• The risk associated with the handling and disposal of HCW