The Defense Health Agency is exploring outsourcing sterile processing for 21 military hospitals.


 The Defense Health Agency is exploring outsourcing sterile processing for 21 military hospitals.

In January 2025, a steam leak shut down Walter Reed's sterile processing department for two weeks. Nearly 270 procedures were delayed, rescheduled, or sent elsewhere.

At Brooke Army Medical Center, instruments with bone fragments, baked-on blood, and hair reached operating rooms. Nineteen surgeons signed a memo. Surgeries were canceled.

Now the option on the table is having outside providers take over processing entirely.

A department doesn't fail on its own. It gets failed — underfunded, understaffed, unseen — until it breaks. Then the answer is to remove it.

Back to Basics: The safest department is the one you resource before it fails, not replace after.

If your department broke tomorrow, what would leadership reach for — the investment or the replacement?

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