 |
|
GeoInsighter Summer
2004 Newsletter
Forewarned Is Forearmed:
Region 1 Announces Enforcement Focus on New England Hospitals Return to the Newsletter
Index
On April 13, 2004, the
United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), Region 1,
announced that it was sending letters to many New England hospitals
regarding its intent to increase enforcement activities within the
healthcare sector, citing concerns regarding potential violations of
environmental regulations. The initiative follows a similar Region 2
initiative announced in December of 2002.
The background of the Regional initiative is instructive and important
for New England hospital administrators and environmental management
staff to understand in considering actions to be taken in response to
April’s announcement. In the mid-1990s, the USEPA undertook compliance
and enforcement initiatives for specific enterprise sectors believed by
the USEPA to represent particular risk of violations, such as metal
finishing industries and, based upon a history of compliance
difficulties, colleges and universities. During the college and
university compliance and enforcement program, the USEPA recognized
substantial barriers to compliance at colleges and universities,
including the traditional diffused and independent management structures
within institutions of higher learning, the variety of potentially
regulated activities at such institutions, and a long-standing lack of
focus on environmental compliance as a consequence of operating in an
academic, non-industrial sector. Accordingly, the USEPA recognized a
need for education and compliance incentives, which, in the first
instance, involved allowing institutions to enter into self-auditing
agreements with the USEPA in exchange for lower enforcement priority and
penalty mitigation. The recognized need for education will, in all
likelihood, carry through to the hospital initiative because the
perceived barriers to compliance are quite similar. Our understanding of
Region 1 intentions is that the initial phase of the initiative will be
to raise awareness within the regulated community regarding the extent
of the hospitals’ environmental obligations, provide compliance
incentives and tools, and allow the regulated community a period of time
to “get the house in order” before inspection and enforcement activities
are increased.
We believe that the “get the house in order” period is an opportunity to
be taken advantage of, and our discussion with members of the regulated
community suggests that hospital management agrees and is coming to the
recognition that because of the diverse activity within a hospital and
the independence of much of the staff (for example, clinical staff from
physical plant, where the latter typically has responsibility for
environmental compliance), the magnitude of the environmental management
burden is not trivial and is perhaps substantially larger than
previously believed. To get the house in order, hospital management
should be evaluating current environmental compliance performance and,
importantly, the extent to which the management systems or structures
currently in place are effective in assuring ongoing compliance. The
importance of this second evaluation is a result of Region 1’s expressed
intent that one outcome of the enforcement initiative will be increased
implementation of “environmental management systems,” or management
structures specifically designed to manage compliance and environmental
performance. With an eye toward future inspections, facilities that have
initiated an evaluation of their environmental management systems will
be better positioned than those that have not.
Christopher M. Rawnsley
cmrawnsley@geoinc.com Return to the Newsletter
Index
|