April 16, 2012—Hospitals help create healthier communities by treating the sick and preventing illnesses and diseases, but ironically, hospitals themselves can pose a health risk to the public when they don’t operate sustainably. As the leadership within the Healthier Hospitals Initiative (HHI) notes, few sectors of the economy consume as many resources—electricity, water, cleaning products, chemicals and food—as health care.
To tackle this problem, HHI, a partnership coordinated by Practice Greenhealth, Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), and the Center for Health Design, is now working with more than 500 leading hospitals across the country who have joined the initiative.
The campaign launched by HHI urges the nation’s hospitals to commit to a three-year initiative to improve the health and safety of patients, staff and communities by using HHI’s newly issued, free step-by-step guides to implement its challenges. They include:
- Engage in leadership on environmental health and sustainability
- Serve healthier foods and beverages
- Reduce energy use
- Reduce waste and recycle
- Use safer chemicals
- Purchase environmentally preferable products
“The health care sector is focused on improving health outcomes and ‘bending the cost curve’ by reining in costs,” said John Messervy, director of capital and facility planning for Partners HealthCare. “This initiative helps hospitals free up resources to do what they do best—care for patients.”
The launch coincides with the Health Care Without Harm/HHI Research Collaborative’s release of Creating a Culture of Sustainability: Leadership, Coordination and Performance Measurement Decisions in Health Care, a report authored by Tonya Boone, PhD, of George Mason University, examining the outcomes of environmental sustainability initiatives at eight health care systems in the United States. The research focused on illuminating organizational factors that contributed to the programs’ achievements and cost savings. In the course of research, Boone identified significant cost savings associated with the initiatives:
- By creating an environmentally preferable purchasing program, nationwide provider Kaiser Permanente estimates it will save approximately $26 million a year.
<b/li> - Dignity Health (formerly Catholic Healthcare West) saved $5.4 million in 2010 by increasing the amount of reusable products it purchased for its hospitals and clinics in California, Arizona and Nevada.
HHI says that during the next three years it will gather data and metrics from participating hospitals to demonstrate the impact these strides are having on the health and safety of patients, workers and communities, as well as on reducing health care expenditures.
