| In Rochester, New York, the local Humane Society saved over 35 percent in medical care costs and helped reduce animal overpopulation in the city using surplus and discarded materials from the local hospital. The Rochester Volunteers of America (VOA) community health cupboard received 14 donated wheelchairs when they had none in stock. Through reuse, people who once couldnt afford a wheelchair can now have one through VOA. One hospital in Rochester recovered over 700 pounds of still-usable equipment and supplies, saving the hospital over $15,000 in disposal costs.
The organization responsible for all these successes is InterVol, a non-profit based in Rochester. Though InterVol evolved from a need to provide medical training to clinics overseas, one component of the organization has expanded into the RUMS Program, or Recycling of Unused Medical Supplies.
InterVols Recycling of Unused Medical Supplies (RUMS) Program was started in 1992 to collect and redistribute thousands of pounds of unused medical supplies and used, but working equipment that upstate New York medical facilities dispose of each week. The RUMS program currently collects over 4,000 pounds a week of supplies and equipment from over 400 locations in New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Over 200 of the locations are located inside the six Rochester, New York area hospitals. The rest are located at nursing homes, doctors offices, ambulance operations and other medical facilities.
The four phases of the RUMS program are education, collection, sorting and inventory and distribution:
EDUCATION
During the education phase, medical facilities are contacted and offered a presentation on how our recovery program works, what supplies are collected, how the recovered supplies are utilized and information about how the recovery program can be implemented. Blue recycling boxes with the RUMS logo are then distributed throughout the facility.
COLLECTION
In the collection phase, InterVols collectors make regularly scheduled pick-ups at each medical facility. Most collections are on a weekly basis. Special collections are also made by request to pick up larger items.
SORTING & INVENTORY
After pickup, the equipment and supplies are delivered to our warehouse, where the collectors pre-sort the supplies into general medical categories. Collectors may pick up at a single doctors office, or at over 30 collection locations in one hospital. The collection route is currently divided by two part-time collectors, who utilize a collection truck with a 15 foot cell and lift gate.
Volunteers, under the direction of a warehouse manager, nurses, physicians and technicians (many of whom are also volunteers themselves), then sort and inventory the collected materials into designated categories such as instrumentation, anesthesia, patient care and surgical supplies. These categories are then divided into 300 subcategories for shipment. After the supplies are sorted, the inventoried box is bar-coded, weighed and labeled for shipping.
DISTRIBUTION
The RUMS program works closely with many local and international organizations including health care facilities, clinics, medical education programs, schools, and the regional humane societies to receive supplies and equipment. Recipient organizations are asked to make a donation to InterVol based on the value of the supplies and equipment, to help offset collection costs. The donations are made in two ways. If the recipient can make the donation, they make it themselves. If they can not afford the donation, we will work with them to find a financial grant, often from a business or charity already working in their area.
GETTING STARTED
From 1992 to 1998, the educational phase of the RUMS program was conducted by volunteer Karen Joyce, RN, and InterVol founder Ralph Pennino, MD, both of whom had regularly traveled with InterVols overseas medical teams. Because Karen was a nurse in the Rochester hospital where the program started, she was able to talk with the nurses as a co-worker, show the medical benefits of the program, and overcome any objections based on patient safety or hospital regulations. Karen is also a gifted public speaker who regularly receives perfect feedback scores for her presentations. The doctors and hospital administrators were contacted by Dr. Pennino, who is also president of the local physicians organization. His dual positions give him unprecedented access to the hospitals senior management to help promote the program.
In the mid 1990s, InterVol received three consecutive grants from the New York States Economic Development agency (now Empire State Development), Office of Recycling Market Development, that allowed InterVol to purchase one day a week of Karen Joyces time from the hospital to expand our collection area and donations to local charities. The criteria for the grants included tracking the number of pounds collected and the value of donations to local non-profit organizations.
In 1998, the third contract with New York State provided for the hiring of a full-time executive director. This hiring allowed InterVol to take advantage of collection and distribution opportunities that the part-time and volunteer staff did not have time to complete.
PROGRAM MAINTENANCE & EXPANSION
In 1999, InterVol started a two-part program to revisit and rejuvenate the six hospitals in Rochester, New York. Since the initial educational presentations, collection areas had changed and new employees were unaware of the RUMS program, or not sure what to collect. In the first part of the program, Karen made new presentations on how InterVol has grown and how the donated supplies were being used. In the second part, a volunteer inside the hospital is identified to work as an inside hospital coordinator to assist with the educational and collection process.
In 1999, we started an aggressive expansion plan collecting supplies and equipment from 23 hospitals in the southern tier and western part of New York State. Because of their distance from our warehouse, performing the collection process at the new hospitals had to be done on a more cost-effective basis than providing a weekly pickup in the over 700 locations inside the new hospitals. The education phase for this expansion differed from the initial hospitals by starting with the basement departments instead of with the doctors and nurses. The basement departments of materials management, central supply, warehousing and purchasing represent the most cost-effective way to start collecting in a hospital, by taking large amounts of supplies and equipment from one area. Basement departments also have the room to store supplies for our collectors, who make collections monthly or bi-monthly instead of weekly. During the next two years the traditional educational process will be initiated in the hospitals.
MAKING A REAL DIFFERENCE
In the last two years, weekly collections have tripled from 1,500 to over 4,000 pounds. Increased local donations have included donations to homeless shelters, hospices and humane societies and will soon top over $150,000 a year. The largest response from donors and volunteers is for our donations to the humane societies. Warehouse volunteer hours have also doubled to over one hundred hours a month. For more information about InterVol, or how to start a RUMS program in your area, contact Doug Castner, Executive Director of InterVol at 716/922-5810, or by e-mail at intervol@yahoo.com |
