Santa Clara County Hospitals Illegally Dumped Medical Waste and Drugs, DA Says

Updated 1:45 p.m., Thursday

Santa Clara County’s hospital system has been illegally disposing of biomedical waste, like blood packs used in transfusions, bloody gauze and bandages, vials of fentanyl, and even human flesh, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen on Thursday said his office’s year-long “covert” investigation found that Valley Medical Center, O’Connor Hospital, and St. Louise Hospital — all county-run institutions — routinely dumped hazardous materials directly into the garbage. The waste was then compacted and sent out to a landfill, where Rosen said there was risk of contamination to the land and water.

“Our investigation of Santa Clara Valley Healthcare has uncovered evidence showing that these hospitals are regularly mismanaging and illegally disposing of medical and hazardous waste and confidential patient information,” Rosen told reporters.

Rosen said even after his office contacted hospital administrators — who run the state’s second-largest public health system — they continued to wrongfully dispose of the hazardous materials.

“This is not a polite, bureaucratic request from one county agency to another,” he said. “This is the law, and we are enforcing it.”

In response, Rosen on Thursday announced plans to bring a civil enforcement action against the county for violating state law, which mandates that medical and hazardous waste be properly stored, transported and disposed of, and handled from “cradle to grave.”

In a statement, Santa Clara Valley Healthcare said it recognizes the immense amount of work that went into the DA’s investigation, and “is taking the matter very seriously.”

“We are committed to adopting industry best-practices to prevent future occurrences and are already implementing corrective actions to address the concerns,” the statement said, adding that the agency is “working to strengthen our efforts in these areas while still delivering high-quality patient care.”

The California Department of Public Health requires (PDF) all medical waste be packaged in red biohazard bags and then either incinerated or sterilized at high temperatures.

Beginning in November 2023, DA investigators began a series of unannounced inspections of garbage compactors hauled away from the county’s three medical centers, finding clear and black bags containing human body tissue, blood, solid hazardous waste items, non-empty vials of prescription drugs, and hundreds of documents and labels with unredacted personal patient information, according to the DA’s office.

“Throwing out unredacted patient information is an egregious violation of your privacy,” Rosen said. “Paperwork and labels that contain our personal and medical information need to be shredded or redacted by the health care provider. That’s not a best practice. That’s the law.”

Rosen said in one instance investigators recovered a patient’s discarded wallet with identification cards in it.

The DA’s office also says it found similar medical and hazardous waste in the garbage produced by Regional Medical Center — a privately owned hospital in East San José — which Santa Clara County recently announced it plans to purchase. A separate enforcement action is ongoing in that case, the DA says.

State law allows for fines of up to $70,000 per disposal of hazardous waste and up to $10,000 per disposal of medical waste, as well as a court-issued injunction to stop the illegal conduct.

Rosen said the county’s fines could add up to “more than a billion dollars.” But he also pointed to a similar case last year involving the state Justice Department and Kaiser Permanente hospitals in California, saying that the resulting $49 million settlement could serve as a possible target.

At Thursday’s press conference, Rosen also noted the county health system’s “multi-billion dollar budget and more than 8,000 employees” that is expanding with more hospitals and patients. But he said “the success of this health care endeavor cannot and should not be measured by size or patient visits alone.”

“The public expects the county to spend its money responsibly, and it expects the DA’s office to make sure that everybody, all the residents, including the county, are following the law. And that’s what we did here,” Rosen said.

The DA’s office is encouraging any county employee with information about the waste to email StopMedicalWaste@dao.sccgov.org.

KQED’s Joseph Geha contributed reporting to this story.