Reusable Surgical Gowns Yield Annual Health Care Economic Benefits- The Assessment of Annual Costs of Reusable Versus Disposable Surgical Gowns

Abstract

Reusable surgical gowns are important in hospitals and when compared to disposable surgical gowns offer significant economic benefits. This study was initiated to quantify the annual cost saving to hospitals by selecting the reusable surgical gown option by using data from 127 separate hospitals over the period of January to December, 2021. These laundries are all separate organizations with their own collection and processing methods, ownership, scale,and varying ages of equipment. All are in competitive markets and so it is assumed to be representative of the larger domain of U.S and Canadian laundries serving hospitals. Annual cost savings were calculated as the difference in annual disposable and reusable costs divided by the annual disposable cost (as a percent). For a representative hospital system there is nearly a 50% annual cost savings which accrues to the health care organization’s bottom line. Said differently, selecting disposable surgical gowns increases the hospitals surgical gown budget by about 190%. For the entire U.S. health care system (6,129 hospitals), a shift to 90% reusable surgical gowns would yield a health care savings of about $354 million per year, a beneficial step.