Operationalizing a PPE reprocessing center

Abstract

The COVID-19 coronavirus has effectively put the world at a crisis capacity strata with PPE requiring healthcare organizations and industries to deploy strategies that are not commensurate with U.S. standards of care. That strategy is the reprocessing of PPE to ensure the security of PPE inventory. How does an organization take steps to implement and operationalize a PPE reprocessing center? Vidant Medical Center (VMC) set up a centralized reprocessing center developed from scientific evidence using three methods: heat, hydrogen peroxide gas plasma, and isopropanol wash. A hub and spoke model for PPE collection was implemented to collect PPE across an entire health system. VMC’s reprocessing center successfully reprocessed over 55,000 individual PPEs.