Decommissioning and Disposal of Health Facilities and Health Technology

Overview

This document outlines the policy and service context and attempts to illustrate the desired planning principles and design considerations for Decommissioning and Disposal of Healthcare Infrastructure and Health Care Technology.

• Part A outlines the national and provincial service and policy context which are the basic determinants of the decommissioning principles;
• Part B contains planning guidance and considerations;
• Part C develops these principles into a series of departmental requirements;
• Part D contains example worksheets and checklists and protocols
• Parts C, D and E are intended to demonstrate how the principles prescribed in Part B can be applied in worked examples. Parts C or D, if used directly, are deemed to satisfy the principles developed in Part B, but are not the only acceptable solutions.

While this document outlines design requirements and acceptance criteria which have an impact on clinical services, these requirements are prescribed within the framework of the entire IUSS set of guidance documents and cannot be viewed in isolation. The following documents should be complied with, together with this document:

POLICY AND SERVICE CONTEXT

Introduction

Healthcare systems are dynamic and constantly changing. Amongst other changes, there are changes in healthcare infrastructure and healthcare technology to meet socio-economic needs and emerging medical requirements.

Healthcare infrastructure is constantly being adapted to meet a population’s healthcare needs. Such adaptation requires alteration of physical infrastructure and construction of new infrastructure. During the alteration or construction of new infrastructure part of or entire old infrastructure becomes redundant and need to be removed from service by decommissioning to be either re-used for other purposes or disposed of.

Health Technology is constantly changing and evolving. This change results in a short life-cycle compared to fixed healthcare infrastructure. Such changes result in old technology being removed from service and posing a health and occupational risk if not properly decommissioned. Health Technology which is out of service might even be re-commissioned for use at less demanding facilities, upgraded or disposed of.

This document provides guidance on procedures to be followed in decommissioning and disposal of healthcare infrastructure and health technology.

Healthcare facilities can generate two distinct waste streams. This document deals only with the waste generated in the decommissioning process and not with the waste generated from the operational waste stream. The terms waste, healthcare waste and healthcare risk waste in this document therefore only refers to forms of decommissioning waste.

Mothballing exists as an alternative to decommissioning. This document does not detail or discuss the requirements and protocols for mothballing.