We’ve all heard the phrase “Reduce, reuse, recycle.” Well, there’s also a fourth secret R: reprocess.

Reprocessing is the act of cleaning and restoring used material for reuse. Hospitals have been reprocessing medical devices for decades. It’s a way for them to cut down on costs and waste without sacrificing patient safety, the independent Government Accountability Office’s research suggests.

Not to mention, it cuts down on indirect supply chain (Scope 3) emissions, which account for an estimated 71% of health system emissions worldwide, according to a 2019 report from sustainability organization Health Care Without Harm.

“Oftentimes, health systems have to choose between saving money and reducing Scope 3 emissions. Single-use device reprocessing presents the opportunity to realize both of those benefits at the same time,” Jake Lyonfields, sustainability strategy manager at nonprofit membership organization Practice Greenhealth, told us.

Zooming in

Northwestern Medicine—an 11-hospital nonprofit health system based in Chicago—launched a formal reprocessing program in 2018 for devices across its patient care areas, operating rooms, and electrophysiology lab.

According to Northwestern’s tally, the program has diverted more than 400,000 pounds of waste since its launch—68,000 pounds in 2025 so far—and saves upwards of 25% per device, Amanda Schaumann, program director of supply chain management at Northwestern Medicine, told us.

“We see the value both from cost savings but also the environmental impact,” she said. “It’s definitely [a program] that we want to continue to grow.”

How it works

The process is fairly straightforward on the hospital side.

Medical staff puts used items in designated bins, from which they’re transported to an outside reprocessing vendor the system contracts with. The vendor disassembles and sterilizes them, then reassembles them back to FDA standards. The vendor then sells reprocessed devices back to Northwestern at a lower cost, Schaumann said.

One low-hanging fruit that Northwestern reprocesses a lot: air-assisted mattresses staff use to help move or transfer patients in and out of bed.

“[The mattresses are] big and bulky and can essentially create a lot of waste,” Schaumann said. “We’ve developed a lot of processes around how we’re able to reprocess those so that we can get as much useful life out of them as possible.”

Reprocessing can also be done for more complex devices, like those used in surgical procedures or electrophysiology. Reprocesser Innovative Health estimated in a 2021 white paper that a brand-new diagnostic ultrasound catheter can cost $2,650 whereas a reprocessed one can be just $1,325.

Countering misconceptions

For other systems looking to start or grow a reprocessing program, Schaumann advised taking a “hands-on” approach.

“Education is always a big piece of it. I think there can be a lot of misconceptions about reprocessing and concerns related to it,” she said.

For instance, the devices Northwestern reprocesses are labeled for “single uses” by their manufacturers. Some might think that means they can only be used once. But it can also just mean the original manufacturer didn’t test whether the device could be reused or chose not to market it that way, according to the FDA.

As of 2000, the FDA requires reprocessing facilities to test and validate their devices to show they’re as safe and effective as the original devices up to however many reuses they’re approved for.

Reprocessing’s rise

A trade organization, the Association of Medical Device Reprocessors (AMDR), was formed in 1999 for the biggest single-use device reprocessors: Cardinal Health’s Sustainable Technologies, Innovative Health, Medline ReNewal, Arjo’s ReNu Medical, Stryker’s Sustainability Solutions, and Berlin-based Vanguard Medical Remanufacturing.

In 2024, AMDR estimated 36 million reprocessed devices were sold to more than 9,000 hospitals and surgical centers, saving the facilities $451 million, reducing medical waste by 12 million pounds, and reducing CO2 emissions by 115 million pounds.

Still, reprocessing companies sometimes face resistance from some of the original manufacturers of these medical devices, whose profits are maximized with “high-volume consumption” of single-use products, according to a 2020 review in Health Affairs.

In May, a California jury found Johnson & Johnson Medtech, for instance, had violated antitrust laws by not providing the same clinical support for another company’s reprocessed catheters as it had for its own versions.