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(Employee engagement toolkit) The rate at which Cleveland Clinic uses energy has financial costs, as well as human and environmental health impacts. Reducing the rate of energy used creates a cleaner environment, improves health, and delivers substantial cost savings over the short and long term. In pursuit of care affordability, over $12M of energy waste was identified across the health system. As the facilities experts fine-tune and upgrade buildings and operating systems, caregivers’ workplace behaviors come into sharp focus to help reduce energy demand.
Type: Resources
Seattle Children’s Hospital has implemented a policy that demonstrates commitment to the principles of Environmentally Preferred Procurement (EPP) in support of the hospital's mission to improve the health of patients and families, staff, and the community. Seattle Children’s will evaluate the environmental impacts (e.g., waste, toxicity) of products and services in an effort to select healthy and safe products and services that are also environmentally sound. Seattle Children’s staff involved with product selection will communicate to the marketplace that Children’s expects suppliers to… Read More
Type: Resources
Mayo Clinic is dedicated to improving the health of its patients and staff through excellence in the practice of medicine. Recognizing the link between environmental health and public health, Mayo Clinic is committed to fiscally responsible environment protection practices that benefit the health of patients, staff, and communities. Therefore, Mayo Clinic exercises a thoughtful and comprehensive sustainable approach to environmental stewardship, which includes energy conservation, green building design, and environmentally responsible purchasing and waste management programs.
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Type: Resources
Regulated medical waste (RMW) is one area where continuous education, communication, assessment, and tracking are critical to maintaining low generation rates. Due to a surgical department’s very nature, it’s unlikely that RMW will ever be eliminated, but since as much as 30% of a facility’s RMW is from the operating room, it’s a great place to focus efforts. Practice Greenhealth and Healthier Hospitals advise a less than 10% RMW generation rate facility-wide. More hospitals are turning to fluid management systems to reduce RMW rates. Here’s how to get started.
Type: Resources
(Health Care Without Harm) There are many opportunities for hospitals to improve patient safety, worker safety, and the overall health of communities and the environment via their food service operations. By implementing environmentally preferable purchasing and other operational and maintenance strategies in food service, hospitals can help to reduce patient, worker and community exposure to toxic chemicals, preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics for treatment of human disease, prevent air and water pollution, reduce waste, conserve natural resources and potentially save money over the… Read More
Type: Resources
The health care industry wields significant purchasing power, representing 17 percent of the U.S. marketplace. However, some of the products marketed to the industry generate unnecessary waste, contain hazardous materials and use excessive energy. By choosing environmentally preferred medical products and equipment for use in hospital facilities, the health care sector can actually generate demand for inherently healthier and safer products and services for patients, workers and the environment. The availability of these products for the health care sector will translate into growing … Read More
Type: Resources
Practice Greenhealth’s 2015 Sustainability Benchmark Report highlights the achievements of the 2015 Environmental Excellence award winners—a set of 220 hospitals who are setting the standard for health care environmental stewardship. This year’s data set is based on reported activities during the 2014 calendar/fiscal year and is organized into ten distinct benchmarking profiles on the different topic areas that may comprise a hospital environmental stewardship program—leadership, waste, chemicals, greening the operating room, food, environmentally preferable purchasing (EPP), energy, water,… Read More
Type: Resources
Recent hospital data demonstrates that recycling in the OR can generate large volumes of recyclables—in excess of 1000lbs of medical plastics weekly at one large NYC institution with more than 40 ORs/surgical procedure areas. At an average cost of $121 per ton for solid waste disposal and a price tag of $68 per ton for recycling the same material a hospital might pay nearly twice the price for medical plastics disposal if the facility does not choose to recycle.
There are several finite steps an organization can follow to set up and implement a medical plastics recycling program in the OR…
Type: Resources
Practice Greenhealth's 2014 edition of the annual health care Sustainability Benchmark Report, highlighting the achievements of the 2014 award-winning facilities. This report provides the nation’s most comprehensive analysis of how hospitals are progressing in their commitment to environmental stewardship. This year’s report is organized into ten separate benchmarking profiles on the different topic areas that make up a hospital environmental stewardship program— leadership, waste, chemicals, greening the operating room, food, environmentally preferable purchasing (EPP), energy, water,… Read More
Type: Resources
Stewardship is a key aspect of the culture at Virginia Mason, as we strive to carefully manage the resources that keep our community in good health. One area of stewardship that is often overlooked in health care is the need to protect the environment. We know it makes good sense to reduce pollution for future generations. At an industry level, health care has lagged behind in taking proactive steps to protect our natural resources, but Virginia Mason is ahead of the curve. We were the first hospital in the Pacific Northwest to begin recycling and composting food waste and materials used in… Read More
Type: Resources
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Practice Greenhealth is the health care sector’s go-to source for information, tools, data, resources, and expert technical support on sustainability initiatives that help hospitals and health systems meet their health, financial, and community goals.
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Practice Greenhealth is the leading sustainable health care organization, delivering environmental solutions to more than 1,500 hospitals and health systems in the United States and Canada. Partnership opportunities include hospitals, health systems, community health organizations, NGOs, nonprofits, government, academic institutions, and the health care value chain.