In sterile processing, water quality touches everything — but managing it often falls to just one person or department. ANSI/AAMI ST108 challenges that old model by making water everyone’s responsibility. It’s a shift that VERDA Water Quality Systems CEO Jeffrey Paquet calls “a defining change in how hospitals think about compliance and accountability.”
Section 4 of ST108 requires each healthcare facility to establish a multidisciplinary water-management team. This group must include infection prevention, surgery, sterile processing, and clinical engineering — and it doesn’t stop there. The standard also calls for executive sponsorship, ensuring that leadership is not only aware of water-quality issues but actively supports the resources and oversight needed to manage them.
As Paquet explains, “Sponsorship means leadership must demonstrate ownership — not just delegate responsibility. They have to empower their teams with both authority and funding to act.”
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That empowerment starts with a risk assessment. The team must analyze every point where water interacts with medical devices — from decontamination sinks to steam generation — and identify risks related to color, microbial load, pH, conductivity, and temperature. The findings shape a facility-specific plan for monitoring, documentation, and response.
This structured, collaborative model not only aligns departments but also builds confidence with accrediting bodies such as The Joint Commission. When leadership can show traceable data, documented testing, and routine oversight, it demonstrates that water quality is being managed proactively rather than reactively.
At VERDA, we help hospitals build these programs from the ground up — providing the testing, reporting, and consultation that keep your team compliant and confident. Because when everyone is accountable for water, everyone wins: safer patients, more reliable instruments, and a stronger sterile processing department.