Summary of Holy Cross Hospital Site Visit

Site:	Holy Cross Hospital

	Silver Spring, Maryland

Date: 		October 31, 2007

Purpose:	To learn about the generation and management of RCRA hazardous
waste in hospitals and their laboratories

Attendees:

U.S. EPA, Office of Solid Waste

Kristin Fitzgerald

Jessica Biegelson

Meg McCarthy

Nick Hilosky

Christina Kager

American Hospital Association

Robyn Cooke, Senior Associate Director, Executive Branch Relations,

Jose Segarra, Operations Manager, American Society for Healthcare
Environmental Services

Holy Cross Hospital Staff

Glenn Anderson, Senior Director, Clinical Services

Jeff Joyner, Vice President, Patient Support Services

David Meeder, Director, Laboratory Services

Richard Parrish, Director, Pharmacy

Mark Bishop, Assistant Director, Pharmacy

Peter McCaffrey, Director, Environmental Services

Beatrice Miller, R.N., Director, Oncology

Jamie Green, R.N., Nurse Manager, Operating Room/Endoscopy

To begin the site visit, staff from Holy Cross Hospital presented
general overview information about their hospital.  We discussed their
current waste practices within the different departments of the
hospital.  We also talked about what types of labs the hospital has and
what lab waste the hospital generates.  

During the discussion, we learned that Holy Cross Hospital is a teaching
hospital that has affiliations with 3 medical schools and 9 nursing
schools, although it does not have a substantial number of interns
placed at the hospital at any one time.  It has one large clinical
laboratory, with many sections, including chemistry, hematology,
histology, microbiology, and cytology.  The laboratory’s main
hazardous wastes, formalin, alcohol, and xylene, are generated by the
histology section of the laboratory.  The hospital does not have
research laboratories, although the hospital does participate in
clinical trials.

Then we took a tour of the hospital, visiting four areas:

Operating Room

Clinical Laboratory 

Pharmacy

Infusion Center

With the exception of the histology section of the clinical laboratory,
nearly all of the equipment in the clinical laboratory was automated and
used pre-packaged “kits” for sample preparation and few, if any,
bottles of chemical reagents were present.

