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A subject site is a 455-bed hospital in the Midwest with a large laundry operation servicing three ancillary long-term care sites in addition to the main hospital and physician buildings. The main hospital building was built in 1965. SITUATION The Engineering staff was challenged to help the site (and IDN) meet overall budget reduction goals in energy use cost reduction driven by National Healthcare Legislation reimbursement reductions.
The Engineering staff also wanted to implement a set of solutions that drove long-term cost reductions that contributed to improving the overall operating… Read More
Type: Resources
Two weeks ago, my daughter Franni and I (along with two other moms and their 8th grade girls) embarked on a volunteer trip to Jaibon, Dominican Republic through a not for profit— Outreach 360. We spent the week teaching English to children aged kindergarten through sixth grade and worked on a project associated with a boy’s orphanage that homed 22 amazing boys. The school principal and orphanage founder were one in the same – “La Tia” – the Aunt.
Students
I was able to connect this experience to my passion for health care sustainability by going online to identify the local hospital. I… Read More
Type: Press
Hospital sustainability programs reduce costs and enhance the quality of patient care. However, given the long list of priorities that hospitals must tackle, sustainability too often falls by the wayside. Today, the benefits of sustainability are too important to ignore. The operating room is often the largest generator of revenue, as well as the largest consumer of supply costs and the biggest generator of waste. Sustainability in the operating room is a multipronged initiative that can include, but is not limited to, recycling and reprocessing equipment; reducing prescription drug waste;… Read More
Type: Resources
Some traditional cleaning products contain ingredients that have been linked to occupational asthma. It is possible for hospitals to maintain optimal infection prevention and control while also reducing staff, patient, and visitor exposure to harmful chemicals present in many traditional hospital cleaners.
Green cleaning goal
Inventory cleaning products and purchase 90% Green Seal or UL ECOLOGO certified cleaning products in the following categories: carpet, window, all purpose, bathroom, and general floor care
For the most commonly used cleaning products, “greener” cleaners can be… Read More
Type: Basic page
Reducing water consumption is a great place for hospitals and health systems to start improving their environmental impact and sustainability practices. There are many reasons water is and should be an area of focus:
Hospitals use approximately 7% of all water use in commercial and institutional U.S. facilities, which is costly when the price of water has slowly been rising over the last decade.
By 2030, it’s estimated that global water supply will only be able to meet 60 percent of our population’s needs.
Though hospitals are often exempted from water conservation regulations in… Read More
Type: Basic page
More than a third of our member hospitals have identified furniture and furnishings as an area where they’d like to reduce patient, employee, and visitor exposure to chemicals of concern, especially as evidence shows that many of the chemicals used in these products off-gas, or migrate out, from the finished product and get into the air and dust, exposing employees, patients, and visitors to the chemicals.Targeted chemicals of concern in furniture and furnishings include:Formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen, found in furniture, cabinets, countertops, and many other products.Flame retardant… Read More
Type: Basic page
(Delivering community benefit: Climate and health toolkit) This climate and health toolkit is designed to help environmental leads introduce a new framing of climate and health to their community benefit colleagues. It introduces tools and resources to help community benefit staff identify climate-related health risks in their communities, current projects that have climate co-benefits, and how to integrate climate and health into the community health needs assessment process.
Type: Resources
The Practice Greenhealth Environmental Excellence Awards is more than an awards program – it’s an opportunity to capture data on environmental quality improvement progress within hospitals and health systems.
Data is power. It has the power to demonstrate a return on investment. It has the power to implement positive change. When submitted through Practice Greenhealth’s Environmental Excellence Awards, it can result in a custom report, helping hospitals see how they compare to their peers and nationally on numerous… Read More
Type: Resources
Dr. Sohini Stone is a board-certified pediatrician and corporate health leader passionate about supporting holistic health and well-being for not only her patients, but for their families and communities. She is currently the chief medical officer for global employee health at Google, supporting cross-company strategy to provide an integrated portfolio of evidence-based programs and services to promote the health and wellbeing of Google’s workforce. Dr. Stone's career has been focused across the spectrum of physical, mental and social health. From academic medical institutions, including… Read More
Type: Staff
Dr. Aparna Bole is a pediatrician and national climate and health leader who has direct expertise in leading sustainability efforts for a multi-hospital academic health system. She is particularly interested in the intersection between environmental stewardship, environmental justice, and pediatric public health. Most recently, she served as a senior consultant in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Climate Change and Health Equity, and she is an adjunct associate professor of pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland. Bole has… Read More
Type: Staff
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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.