It is estimated that $200 million worth of prepared materials are discarded unused in operating rooms in the United States each year. Although some of these materials have been successfully recovered for overseas donation, they nevertheless constitute an undesirable burden on health care efficiency. This situation has prompted a reevaluation of the procedures that result in the overpreparation of surgical supplies, in the hope of reducing hospital, patient, and third-party payer expenditures. A database, which was initially developed to track the overseas donation of recovered supplies from Yale-New Haven Hospital, is now being applied to measure approaches to waste reduction. This report summarizes the application of this database to an integrated program designed to modify nursing procedures and physician prespecified supply lists.
REMEDY is a not-for-profit organization (501(c) (3)) housed in the offices of the Department of Anesthesiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT.