
Gargantuan freestanding sterile processing facilities are becoming a thing. Just this year, Ohio State University and Penn Medicine unveiled stand-alone facilities. This trend should give surgical facilities more real estate to serve additional patients while also providing sterile processing departments the square footage they need to perform their critical functions in the most efficient ways possible. Facilities leaders say these dual victories can be achieved without sacrificing the sterility of the instrument sets while in transit and won't keep OR teams waiting if there's a traffic jam or a snowstorm. We spoke to three facilities that opted to go the freestanding route to provide you with a closer look at the ins and outs of offsite instrument reprocessing.