Identifying and Predicting Healthcare Waste Management Costs for an Optimal Sustainable Management System: Evidence from the Greek Public Sector

Anastasios Sepetis (), Paraskevi N. Zaza, Fotios Rizos and Pantelis G. Bagos
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Anastasios Sepetis: Postgraduate Health and Social Care Management Program, University of West Attica, 12244 Athens, Greece
Paraskevi N. Zaza: Department of Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics, University of Thessaly, 35131 Lamia, Greece
Fotios Rizos: Department of Business Administration, University of West Attica, 12241 Athens, Greece
Pantelis G. Bagos: Department of Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics, University of Thessaly, 35131 Lamia, Greece

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 16, 1-20

Abstract: The healthcare sector is an ever-growing industry which produces a vast amount of waste each year, and it is crucial for healthcare systems to have an effective and sustainable medical waste management system in order to protect public health. Greek public hospitals in 2018 produced 9500 tons of hazardous healthcare wastes, and it is expected to reach 18,200 tons in 2025 and exceed 18,800 tons in 2030. In this paper, we investigated the factors that affect healthcare wastes. We obtained data from all Greek public hospitals and conducted a regression analysis, with the management cost of waste and the kilos of waste as the dependent variables, and a number of variables reflecting the characteristics of each hospital and its output as the independent variables. We applied and compared several models. Our study shows that healthcare wastes are affected by several individual-hospital characteristics, such as the number of beds, the type of the hospital, the services the hospital provides, the number of annual inpatients, the days of stay, the total number of surgeries, the existence of special units, and the total number of employees. Finally, our study presents two prediction models concerning the management costs and quantities of infectious waste for Greece’s public hospitals and proposes specific actions to reduce healthcare wastes and the respective costs, as well as to implement and adopt certain tools, in terms of sustainability.

Keywords: climate change; public health; waste management; healthcare waste; medical waste; sustainability in healthcare; Greece (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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