Stericycle Signs Multi-year, Multi-service Agreement With Premier for Regulated Medical Waste and Pharmaceutical Waste Compliance Services

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., to renew two services: Regulated Medical Waste and Pharmaceutical Waste Compliance.

In addition to renewing these services, the agreement was expanded to include Stericycle's Hazardous Waste service and Integrated Waste Stream Solutions.  The national agreement, effective July 1, is available to nearly 2,300 Premier member hospitals.

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.

Stericycle's technologies help ensure hospital medical waste compliance

Stericycle's Regulated Medical Waste service utilizes the proprietary Bio Track data management system to trace the hospital's medical waste. This type of documentation is essential for accountability and regulatory compliance in the management of biohazardous material.  Bio Track facilitates "cradle-to-grave" management of waste. Additionally, Stericycle's secure On-line Manifest Archive System enables hospitals to stay compliant with the Department of Transportation manifest documentation requirement. The service also includes training of hospital staff to assure appropriate waste segregation.

"Changing and often confusing regulations make it difficult for hospitals to know how to maintain compliance when patient outcomes are their highest priority. Stericycle stays on top of the legislation regarding hospital waste streams. On a daily basis, more than 1,000 Stericycle employees are in hospitals training staff, or working with hospital staff to manage their regulated medical waste streams. Stericycle takes the worry out of waste for thousands of healthcare organizations who want to be in compliance and minimize their environmental impact," said Brent Arnold, Stericycle's corporate vice president of healthcare services.

More hospitals want to understand the complexities of pharmaceutical waste compliance

As pharmaceuticals are being detected in public drinking water, hospitals are seeking solutions to meeting Environmental Protection Agency regulations and Joint Commission standards. Stericycle's Pharmaceutical Waste Compliance service assists hospitals with these complex issues, through a simple four–step turnkey process of: identification of hospital formulary characterization and coding; onsite education of pharmacy, nursing and environmental services staff; implementation of color-coded reusable containers; and safe, compliant transportation and destruction of pharmaceutical waste.

A four hospital health system in the Midwest, that is a Premier member, describes the importance of having a plan for managing its waste streams with an emphasis on pharmaceutical waste.

"Each year, more regulations are enacted to require appropriate segregation, transportation and treatment of healthcare waste. In January, the Safe Pharmaceutical Disposal Act began in Illinois to prohibit the disposal of unused medication into a public wastewater collection system. As a healthcare leader with four hospitals in the Chicago region, Adventist Midwest Health is ahead of the compliance curve with Stericycle's Pharmaceutical Waste Compliance Service in the development and implementation of a comprehensive environmental program," said Jack Durley, pharmacy director at Adventist Hinsdale Hospital.

Stericycle's services balance a hospital's need for managing expenses, adhering to environmental best practices and understanding often confusing regulations and standards. Compliance is achieved when acute care hospitals have a national expert, knowledgeable of federal and local regulations or standards such as: The Joint Commission; the Environmental Protection Agency's Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976; and the Department of Transportation.

About Premier Inc., 2006 Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award recipient

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 440,000 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.