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Stericycle is the largest provider of
regulated medical waste management services
in the United States, providing regulated
medical waste collection, transportation,
treatment and disposal to over 290,000
customers in 48 states, the District
of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada and
Mexico. Peter Chung, the company’s
Vice President for Environmental Safety
and Health in the Western Region, is
responsible for keeping the company’s
operations in compliance with diverse
regulatory requirements. Regional environmental
safety and health managers are directly
responsible for compliance at multiple
sites. |
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Logistically, the company has a large
number of sites, with a relatively small
number of employees at each site. The
geographic dispersion and small numbers
at each location make compliance management
a challenge, and the fact that the company
collects and transports medical waste
invokes numerous regulatory requirements,
involving DOT, OSHA and EPA regulations.
“Traditionally, compliance
is not measurable unless it fails, leaving
you nothing but claims data to evaluate
your performance” says Chung,
“and we were determined to find
an effective tool that would let us
take a more proactive approach.” |
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Stericycle hired TrueNorth to manage
its employees’ training, medical
and DOT driver qualification compliance
requirements. Using its state of the
art approach, TrueNorth receives faxed
information on any compliance-related
event from any Stericycle site, verifies
it, and then enters the data into its
database. All pertinent compliance information
is updated continuously, and is available
on demand over the Internet to company
managers. |
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Compliance reports from TrueNorth
have allowed Stericycle to quantify
the results of its compliance efforts,
and to manage them in a more proactive
fashion. “I review reports
about three or four times a week to
see how our sites are doing,”
says Chung. “We can intervene
when we see a trend and anticipate
upcoming deadlines. We have even begun
using these data just like others
use sales and operations numbers—to
drive incentive and bonus plans for
our management.”
“No
one in today’s environment has
the time or resources to collect these
data the old-fashioned way—by
doing an on-site audit,” according
to Chung. “For a very minimal
investment of our time, TrueNorth
gives us a means to measure our level
of performance. We can tell exactly
how we’re doing in each area,
at any time, and we can plan far more
effectively for upcoming demands.
I’ve been in this business a
long time, and if I had to start from
scratch, I would design a compliance
measurement and reporting system just
like what TrueNorth has created.”
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TrueNorth’s
Navigator online service enables organizations
to capture, record and report safety, health,
training and environmental data for more
effective management of compliance efforts.
For more information, call 713.466.0829.
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