CareFusion Acquires Pharmaceutical Waste Sorting System
The company says Pyxis EcoStation can help hospitals reduce cost and improve environmental compliance.
CareFusion, a medical technology company, has acquired technology to automate the segregation of pharmaceutical waste, helping hospitals reduce cost, improve regulatory controls, and facilitate environmental responsibility.
Hospitals may be fined up to $37,500 per infraction, per day, for improper disposal of pharmaceutical waste. Recently, a government-owned hospital was fined $51,501 and ordered to spend $500,000 to develop a program for pharmaceutical waste management; another large cancer hospital was fined $372,254 for improper handling and storage of hazardous pharmaceutical waste.
With the acquisition of Vestara, a Calif.-based company focused exclusively on developing solutions for the management of pharmaceutical waste, CareFusion expands its Pyxis medication management portfolio with the Pyxis EcoStationTM – a hardware and software system that can help hospitals identify, classify, and segregate pharmaceutical waste, while providing records to facilitate tracking and regulatory controls.
“Pharmaceutical waste management is a challenging issue, with many of the nation’s hospitals remaining non-compliant due to complex handling requirements specific to each medication classification, and varying regulations at federal, state, and local levels,” said Tom Leonard, president of Dispensing Technologies at CareFusion. “CareFusion can now help in a way that protects their employees, the environment and their bottom line.”
The company's patented Pyxis EcoStation system uses barcode technology for drug identification and a database of more than 180,000 National Drug Code products to categorize and separate pharmaceutical waste at the point of disposal. By automating the identification and sorting of different types of residual drugs, the Pyxis EcoStation system eliminates the human error and potential cross contamination inherent in manual sorting of pharmaceutical waste.
Source: CareFusion