Stericycle Signs Multi-Year, Multi-Service Agreement With Premier for Integrated Waste Stream Solutions

LAKE FOREST, Ill., July 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Stericycle Inc. (Nasdaq: SRCL), a leader in healthcare-related services that protects people and reduces risk, announced it has been awarded a new contract with Premier Purchasing Partners, LP, the group purchasing unit of Premier, Inc.

The new national agreement for Stericycle's Integrated Waste Stream Solutions, effective July 1, 2010, is available to 2,300 acute care hospital members of the Premier healthcare alliance. The agreement also includes a contract for Stericycle's Hazardous Waste service and two existing contracts for its renewed services for Regulated Medical Waste and Pharmaceutical Waste Compliance.

Stericycle selected by Premier as exclusive healthcare waste supplier

As part of this national agreement, Premier also selected Stericycle as the sole source provider for its ASCEND program (Accelerated Supply Chain Endeavor) that is designed to help healthcare providers achieve and sustain rapid improvements in supply chain performance. In this agreement, Premier selected Stericycle as the exclusive medical waste supplier of all four services to the 188 ASCEND members.

Hospitals can manage all waste streams with one provider

Stericycle's Integrated Waste Stream Solutions facilitate acute care hospitals in effectively managing all 10 disparate waste streams with one provider. This service effectively balances a hospital's need for decreasing expenses, adhering to environmental best practices and meeting confusing regulations and standards. Specifically:

• Costs can be better contained due to proactive scheduling and appropriate waste segregation.
• Environmental best practices include keeping drugs out of the water and increasing recycling percentages
• Compliance is achieved with onsite auditing and training that helps meet multiple governing bodies' regulations and standards including the:
  • Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) of 1976
  • Occupational and Safety Health Association (OSHA)
  • The Joint Commission (TJC)
  • Department of Transportation (DOT)

Onsite audits, education and training are provided by a national team of Stericycle's healthcare compliance specialists. Hospital staff behavior is modified to ensure national and local regulatory compliance and growth of environmental sustainability programs.

"Today, no one in the hospital is accountable for the coordinated management of all waste streams. Based on our audits of hundreds of hospitals, Stericycle can make a big impact on improving a hospital's bottom line. Because we are solely focused on healthcare we are able to balance regulatory requirements, streamline processes and diminish the environmental footprint. Departments such as environmental services, facilities management, nursing and risk management teams are critical for implementation. We focus on the bigger picture and have the established infrastructure to ensure that a hospital's goals are achieved," noted Brent Arnold, Stericycle's corporate vice president of healthcare services.

Stericycle's Integrated Waste Stream Solutions is a single-source, waste stream management service that hospitals have been using for more than 10 years.

"With Stericycle's Integrated Waste Stream Solutions, NuHealth Systems minimizes the complexities of managing all of its waste streams," said Larry Slatky, executive vice president of operations at the NuHealth System, a Premier member in New York. "Along with a hospital's regulatory risk and associated costs, maintaining state and federal compliance and focusing on green outcomes are just a few objectives that this program helps us meet," noted Slatky.

Four Stericycle services make up comprehensive national agreement

The national agreement with the Premier healthcare alliance members, such as NuHealth systems, also gives members access to a new contract for Stericycle's Hazardous Waste service. The service manages this complex waste stream generated from numerous departments in the hospital. Additionally, members can access the two existing Premier contracts for Stericycle's Regulated Medical Waste services and Pharmaceutical Waste Compliance.

About Premier Inc.

The Premier healthcare alliance is more than 2,300 U.S. hospitals and 67,000-plus other healthcare sites working together to improve healthcare quality and affordability. Owned by not-for-profit hospitals, Premier maintains the nation's most comprehensive repository of clinical, financial and outcomes information and operates a leading healthcare purchasing network. A world leader in helping deliver measurable improvements in care, Premier works with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the United Kingdom's National Health Service North West to improve hospital performance. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Premier also has offices in San Diego, Philadelphia and Washington. Follow Premier on Twitter.

About Stericycle:

Lake Forest, IL-based Stericycle (NASDAQ: SRCL) is a leader in healthcare-related services that protect people and reduce risk. With more than 430,000 customers worldwide, Stericycle has operations in North America, Europe, and Latin America. Visit www.stericycle.com.

Safe Harbor Statement: Statements in this press release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond our control (for example, general economic conditions). Our actual results could differ significantly from the results described in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause such differences include changes in governmental regulation of medical waste collection and treatment and increases in transportation and other operating costs, as well as the other factors described in our filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. As a result, past financial performance should not be considered a reliable indicator of future performance, and investors should not use historical trends to anticipate future results or trends. We make no commitment to disclose any subsequent revisions to forward-looking statements.

SOURCE Stericycle Inc.