news briefs

Bio Care Owner Accused of Fraud

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olice recently arrested Paul Montano – owner of Bio Care, a company that receives donated bodies and their internal organs and body parts for biomedical research and medical and pharmaceutical studies – after finding heads and other body parts at a medical waste facility in Kansas City, Kansas, reports kansascity.com. The body parts had been donated to Bio Care and were supposed to be cremated. Montano is facing three counts of fraud. According to Montano, after Bio Care harvests organs from donated bodies the bodies are refrigerated. When the harvested organs are returned, the bodies are reassembled, cremated and the ashes are sent to the families. The company pays the cremation costs, which run from $600 to $1,800. Bio Care has a contract with the medical waste disposal company Stericycle to dispose of medical waste, soft tissue and organs, but not heads and torsos. Reportedly, shipments to New Mexico Learning Center, one of Bio Care’s clients, have been getting increasingly larger over the past three months. Riverside Funeral Home, which also did business with Bio Care, reports that many bodies scheduled to be delivered for cremation have never been received. Investigators say three of the bodies that were found have death certificates that say they’ve already been cremated. Some of the body parts, they add, appear to have been dismembered by a chainsaw or similar instrument.

Website Helps Consumers to Safely Dispose of their Pharma Waste

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hanks to a new website – disposemymeds.org – consumers in 40 states are finding it easier than ever to safely dispose of their unused and unwanted medications, reports stormh20.com. The website allows consumers to search by city, state or zip code for collection sites that participate in “Dispose My Meds,” a program facilitated by the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) and Sharps Compliance Inc. (SCI) to collect and properly dispose of pharma waste. Currently, nearly 800 pharmacies are participating in the program. An estimated four billion prescriptions are written in the US each year. About 40 percent of the drugs that are not dispensed in hospitals are never taken, creating roughly 200 million pounds of unused pharmaceuticals annually. These unused meds not only find their way into the drinking water of millions of Americans, they are also a leading cause of accidental poisoning. NCPA is encouraging other community pharmacies to voluntarily sign up for the “Dispose My Meds” program. NCPA President Joseph Harmison says, “Safe and practical disposal programs make a real difference in addressing this growing public health concern. I commend these pharmacies for stepping up for the good of their communities and their patients… hopefully, consumers will gain a greater appreciation of their local community pharmacy. I also appreciate the support our allies and sponsors have shown for this effort.” Many of the pharmacies participating in the ”Dispose My Meds” program are using the TakeAway Environmental Return System, through NCPA and SCI partnership. “We are proud to work with NCPA and its membership to more efficiently and effectively address the problem pharmacists, patients and communities face with unused patient medication,” says Claude A. Dance, SCI’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “It also gives patients and pharmacists’ proactive adherence and counseling opportunities to ensure patients are taking the meds as prescribed by their physician as well as a way to safely discard their unused medications and keep our communities safer.”

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Info Request #128 Medical Waste Management APR-JUN 2010

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