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Tenet to pay $200,000 to settle waste-dumping charges

Hospital Safety Connection, July 28, 2003

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Tenet Healthcare recently agreed to pay $200,000 to settle medical waste dumping charges involving two of the company's California hospitals, the Press-Enterprise (Riverside, CA) reports.

Officials say it is the largest hospital medical waste-dumping settlement in Riverside County history and may be one of the largest in California.

The settlement involves Tenet's Desert Regional Medical Center in Palm Springs and John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital in Indio, but the hospitals did not admit any wrongdoing. Both hospitals have revised their waste handling policies and expanded employee training to prevent waste disposal problems.

County officials accused the two hospitals of unlawfully dumping unsterilized medical wastes over an 18-month period from August 2001 through February 2003. Among the materials were bloody syringes, test tubes containing blood, and unused pharmaceuticals.

The hospital allegedly dumped most of the material at a county waste transfer station in Coachella or at the county's Edom Hill landfill, said Riverside County Deputy District Attorney Paul Dickerson. The largest instance involved 99 bags of medical wastes, but most incidents involved only a small handful of bags.

Some waste, including syringes and blood-filled test tubes marked with patient names, was found dumped in a trash container behind an abandoned Denny's restaurant in Cabazon.

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