From Lena H. Sun’s “Hospitals, health groups use purchasing power to push for greener medical products,” published in the Washington Post October 12th:

Hospitals and health systems are organizing the industry’s vast purchasing power to push manufacturers of medical products to make them with safer chemicals and to be more environmentally friendly.

Five large groups that buy $130 billion of these products every year on behalf of hospitals and other health-care facilities have adopted a standard set of questions they want vendors to answer. Those questions, which will be released Thursday at an industry conference, are designed to encourage manufacturers to produce “greener and safer products for workers, patients and the environment,” said Gina Pugliese, vice president of the Premier health-care alliance, which has a division that does group purchasing.

The move is significant because the groups represent more than 4,000 hospitals and thousands of other health-care organizations, including doctor’s offices, labs and long-term-care facilities. They already leverage the collective buying power of hospitals and other facilities to negotiate discounts on products.

For the entire article:

[Washington Post]