Nebraska Medical Center Earns Gold Award

Accepting the Financial Sustainability Gold Award and the Environmental Sustainability Silver Award are Jaime Krueger-Gomez, manager, Asset Management; Anthony Centamore, project manager, Asset Management; Brooklyn Ferreira, regional account manager, Centurion; Dylan DeRoberts, director of biomedical projects, Asset Management; and Bob Ruis, manager, Purchasing. Not pictured is Brittany Pack, clinical engineer, Asset Management.

Nebraska Medical Center recently received the Financial Sustainability Gold Award, 2018, from Centurion Service Group, who annually recognizes top U.S. hospitals for financial and environmental sustainability in responsible equipment management. Nebraska Medical Center also received the Environmental Sustainability Silver Award from Centurion.

“These awards represent the efforts that our organization is making toward a sustainable campus, while achieving better financial outcomes with a reduced effort (labor),” says Bob Ruis, manager, Purchasing.

The Financial Sustainability Award recognizes the nation’s top hospitals for strategic participation in Centurion Service Group’s surplus medical equipment program increasing the lifetime value of medical equipment, creating revenue by freeing important resources to access new technology and improve patient care. The Environmental Sustainability Silver Award represents having more than 250 pieces of medical equipment sold, and helping to avoid added waste in landfills.

Centurion Service Group is a medical equipment auction house that handles the challenges of surplus medical equipment. Its sophisticated infrastructure streamlines the process for equipment removal.

Being awarded “Gold” level is an achievement in responsible asset management as a solution to the challenges surplus equipment can pose, and an accomplishment in accessing the financial benefits it generates through auction with Centurion Service Group. Hospitals achieving “Gold” level achieved annual medical equipment sales of at least $50,000. Liquidating surplus medical equipment through auction represents a significant reduction in environmental harm, as well as, the positive impact of making medical equipment available for resale to underserved communities the world-over.

“By collaborating with Centurion, we have been able to be more successful at the disposal of medical devices,” says Jaime Krueger-Gomez, manager, Asset Management. “Centurion will take anything we have, whether it is broken or fully functional, which makes it a one-stop shop for asset disposal.”

Most importantly, the gold designation represents the sustainability practices by Nebraska Medicine by keeping this surplus equipment out of landfills.

Melanie Stewart, campus sustainability manager, applauds the efforts being recognized by this honor.

“From a sustainability standpoint, the process team have put into place to take equipment out of our system at the appropriate time so it can be refurbished and reused at other places is a great practice,” says Stewart. “If they didn’t send this equipment in, it would likely be in the trash, as it’s made from multiple materials and not able to be recycled without being fully disassembled. It’s a lot of equipment and heavy, so our waste stream would look very different if they weren’t doing this.”

Ruis adds that the Financial Sustainability Gold Award highlights just one sustainability success.

“I want to encourage anyone, who is preventing items from going to the landfill, to share what they are doing with Melanie Stewart,” says Ruis. “There are many of you who have implemented things that are going unnoticed and uncaptured. This award, along with all the other sustainability efforts in the organization gets us one step closer to our 2030 goal.”

To learn more about our 2030 sustainability goals, click here.