Awards resources and FAQs

1. Go to platform.practicegreenhealth.org.
2. To log in, click the “User Login” button in the upper right corner of the screen.
3. Enter your username (primary email) and password, and you will arrive at your organizational dashboard.
4. If you have forgotten your password, click on the “Request New Password” tab on the login page, enter your current email address, and click “Email New Password.” You will then receive an email with a unique, one-time hyperlink that will allow you to confirm your email and set up your password.

The awards platform at platform.practicegreenhealth.org uses a separate username and password from the Practice Greenhealth website at practicegreenhealth.org. Please ensure you are using the correct account to access the platform. If you continue to have trouble accessing your awards account, please contact awards@practicegreenhealth.org or 888-378-2259. Our help desk will assist you in accessing your awards account.

The questions on the program pages of the application cover a wide range of sustainability tactics and strategies, and we do not expect a facility to implement all of them. Instead, we hope to capture what you are doing well and provide inspiration for where to go next.

Submitting a page for scoring signals that you spent time on that page of the application and are proud of the work you have done over the past year. More importantly, choosing not to submit a page for scoring indicates that you have chosen not to prioritize that program area at the moment, as it’s unrealistic to expect that sustainability programs can grow by trying to do everything at once.

Once you are logged in and on your dashboard, you can add additional users if you are an admin-level user. Additional users are typically departmental leads or topic experts who can assist you in completing one or more sections of the application.

1. Click the white “Add User” button.
2. Enter the person’s name, title, phone, and email address.
3. Then click the green “Add User” button.

This person will receive an email with directions for setting up a unique password so they can access the organizational dashboard and navigate the application.

Important: You will need to tell team members in advance what to expect and ask them to complete the questions or category pages that are in their area of expertise. For instance, a facility manager might be asked to click on the icon with the red plug (Energy) or blue raindrop (Water) in the navigation bar at the top of the page.

Yes. Practice Greenhealth has already partnered with several sustainability dashboard providers to import data into award applications. Contact the awards program team at awards@practicegreenhealth.org for more information on setting up an import. We ask that you let us know before March 15 if possible if you intend to use the import feature.

We ask that you turn system-level data into facility-level data by using a normalizer. Simply dividing the system-level data by the number of hospitals won’t yield accurate data and can significantly affect benchmarking accuracy. Instead, consider what demographic number could act as the most appropriate normalizer. For example, if this is for the cost of televisions in patient rooms, proportion each hospital by the number of beds. If this is for the cost of staff computers, proportion by FTEs. If this is for refrigerant emissions, proportion by square feet. If you normalize your data in this way, we ask that you explain what you did and how in the comment box – this helps us understand your methodology and helps you document what happened for future applications. If you would like advice on what normalizers to use, please contact us at awards@practicegreenhealth.org.

Campus scope is an important aspect of how Practice Greenhealth benchmarks data. It depends on when the building went online or offline. We want your energy and water use intensity calculations to yield accurate results. If your building square footage changed early in the year, we recommend reporting the updated square footage and making a note in the comments. If your building square footage changed late in the year, we recommend reporting your square footage prior to the change and making a note in the comments. If your building square footage changed in the middle of the year, we recommend reporting the square footage you had the longest and providing estimates for your utilities for the months you did not have that square footage by normalizing the usage from the months you have accurate usage for and including notes about what you did in the comments. Reach out to awards technical assistance (awards@practicegreenhealth.org) for guidance.

To submit an application, the first step is to click the “Review This Application” button in the upper right-hand corner (located above the application page). This link will take you to the review page, which will cycle through each section of the application and let you know if you have:

• Empty data fields
• Validation errors (e.g., data entered in the wrong format)
• Unusual or invalid numerical data (this can indicate improperly entered data)
• Missing required data fields

Each of these can be checked by clicking on the corresponding question or page link.

None of these warnings will prevent you from submitting the application except for required fields, but pay attention as you may lose points for not entering data or entering it correctly.

When all required fields have been entered, you will see a “Submit to Practice Greenhealth” button at the bottom of the screen. After clicking it, you will receive an email confirming your application has been received.

Some health systems like to review their facilities’ applications before final submission. If your facility is part of a larger system, please check with your leadership to see if they would like to review your application before final submission. If yes, please use the “Submit to Health System” option.

If your leadership does not want to review your application, or if you are not part of a system, please use the “Submit to Practice Greenhealth” option. This constitutes final submission.

If you found an error before the deadline, we can return your application to you to correct your data and resubmit. Just email us at awards@practicegreenhealth.org or call us at 888-378-2259.

If you found an error after the deadline but before scoring is complete, we may be able to fix small errors on your behalf. Send us a brief description of what’s wrong, what you originally submitted, and what it should be changed to at awards@practicegreenhealth.org.

If you found an error after awards have been assigned, we can’t correct it on the application, because we need the applications to be a record of what you submitted. However, you can fix your data in the archive, which will correct the data point for import in future applications.

To access the archive, log into your account on the awards platform and click on the “Dashboard” button in the top right-hand corner of the screen. If you click on the carrot next to your facility’s name, the screen will expand, and a “Data Archive Dashboard” button will appear to the right of your facility’s name. Clicking on that button will bring you to a list of data views by program area. At this point, you can find the view that shows which data point you need to correct. The archive stores your facility’s data by year. If you need help with the data archive, please contact us at awards@practicegreenhealth.org.