Supporting Sustainability in Healthcare: 5 Best Practices

The definition of sustainability in healthcare varies by perspective. Ecological sustainability (vs. economic) most often refers to the initiatives meant to promote your patients’ best health outcomes while minimizing negative environmental impacts.

Healthcare-related ecological impacts contribute more than 4% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. For a system that’s meant to protect patients, its pollution directly jeopardizes the health of vulnerable populations (such as patients who suffer from asthma).

To help you address some of the more pressing concerns regarding healthcare’s environmental impact, we’ll provide an overview of the issue with practical steps for remediating harmful practices. Tackling these healthcare sustainability issues is often a challenging, complex process of change. Yet with the right strategies, your organization can improve the sustainability of its surrounding environment while ensuring the future wellbeing of your staff and patients.

What Is Sustainability in Healthcare?

The link between asthma outcomes and air pollution is just one glimpse into the interconnection between human health and the natural environment. People need air, food, water, and shelter to survive. Healthcare sustainability initiatives often involve helping people to access those requirements, while also working to protect them.

In practice, this may include addressing the emissions from anesthetic gases that contribute to poor air quality and respiratory complications, or partnering with local food suppliers to help connect residents with healthier, fresher options. Though the steps to address ecological impacts may shift, the goal of all sustainability initiatives should always focus on better patient outcomes.

Why Is Sustainability Important in Healthcare?

More organizations are recognizing the importance of sustainability in healthcare. Jobs like sustainability managers are becoming more common among large-scale providers. The justification for this shift toward greener practices (and teams) often boils down to three major considerations.

Risk Reduction

A study that followed Medicare beneficiaries found that in the week following a natural disaster, emergency department visits increased by more than 250 excess visits. Because these types of disasters (hurricanes, floods, and wildfires, for example) are becoming more frequent and more severe, healthcare providers have an obligation to prepare, ensuring they can provide care throughout such events. They also need to consider how their facilities contribute to these events (such as construction and landscaping designs that worsen flooding) and help mitigate the fallout.

Resource Management

Hospitals require resources to deliver effective care and operations. Many ecological sustainability efforts prioritize better management of those critical resources, whether in terms of a specific care tool or the organizational budget. Efforts like switching to reusable healthcare products may require slightly more upfront costs, but ultimately conserve resources by decreasing the amount of waste and eliminating the need for ongoing product purchasing.

Ethical Responsibility

Most of the professionals who work within healthcare adhere to a value system like the Nursing Code of Ethics or the Hippocratic Oath, obligating them to help and do no harm. Because individual wellbeing is so inherently tied to the surrounding natural environment, healthcare staff and organizations have a duty to protect that environment from contamination that could jeopardize residents.

The Benefits of Sustainable Healthcare Practices

Environmental stewardship in healthcare has the potential to drive many system and community benefits. Some of these include:

• Improved public health outcomes.
• Mitigation of future climate-related risks.
• Cost reduction from better supply management.
• Better compliance with regulations (around waste, for example).
• More resilient supply chains through conservation of essential resources.

How to Measure Sustainability in Healthcare: Examples and Facility Considerations

It can be difficult to measure and assert the achievement of sustainability, and healthcare’s dynamic operational needs only add to the challenge. Rather than approaching sustainability as a broad goal, it’s better for organizations to choose a few specific metrics to better analyze the success or growth points of sustainability initiatives.

Supporting Sustainable Healthcare: 5 Best Practices

Now that we’ve addressed what environmental stewardship in healthcare means (and why it’s important), let’s examine some practical steps for protecting your patients from ecological risk.

1. Make Your Green Healthcare Initiatives Visible

Although some of the most visible actions (like recycling) often don’t have much effect on the largest healthcare sustainability issues, they can foster increased engagement from staff and patients. By adopting programs that display the organizational commitment to sustainability, healthcare facilities achieve better transparency around the change management process and facilitate more trust for when that process demands additional effort from staff or patients.

Recommendations:

• Consider using the facility’s landscaping to showcase a commitment to safe water runoff, or to create a garden that displays a desire for cleaner air and green spaces.
• Promote ride-sharing with prominent, convenient parking spaces reserved for carpoolers or by creating incentive programs around public transportation usage.

2. Use Education to Improve Patient and Staff Engagement

Rather than creating a specific “green team” where interest may fade over time, encourage your entire organization to engage with sustainability initiatives. To accomplish this shift in cultural and organizational values, education is key. Staff and patients need to know why sustainable-minded changes are valuable and how participation affects the overall success of the program and more importantly, public health.

Recommendations:

• Invest in public speakers and experts who can host engaging (and preferably interactive) seminars or classes that make sustainability information and actions accessible.
• Share the benefits of your programs as you discover them. If your organization switched to more energy-efficient LED lighting, share the resulting cost savings data with your staff and explain how that money is now being used for their (and/or their patients’) benefit.

3. Employ Thoughtful Healthcare Purchasing

Whether it’s switching medications for alternatives with a lower carbon footprint or changing your cafeteria offerings to include more locally sourced food, thoughtful purchasing aligns your healthcare spending with your ecological values. By employing mindful consumption, you’re more likely to maximize the benefits of the resources you invest in while minimizing the risk of associated waste.

Recommendations:

• With known greenhouse emitters like anesthetic gases that are necessary for safe surgical procedures, consider shopping around for alternatives with lower emission rates.
• Encourage stakeholder buy-in with the upfront costs of sustainable swaps by articulating the careful consideration that led to the purchasing initiative. For example, use research into potential cost savings to drive the replacement of old windows for energy-efficient options.

4. Minimize and Manage Your Medical Waste

Healthcare generates a significant amount of waste every day, 15% of which poses health risks (through radiation contamination, for example). Some of that discard is unavoidable and requires significant investment in safe handling to ensure the containment of exposure and infectious risks. Yet, to save money and minimize environmental consequences, it’s important to reduce the generation of waste wherever possible (excess product packaging or use of nonrecyclables, for example) in addition to following safe disposal strategies.

Recommendations:

• Monitor product inventories to avoid overbuying that results in wasted medications or supplies due to expiration or disuse.
• Implement a recycling program that extends the product lifecycle of certain medical packaging or single-use devices.

5. Keep the Sustainability Mission Patient-Centered

Protecting the environment protects people, which means that sustainability initiatives should shift and develop alongside the needs of communities and patients. Advocacy and ongoing change should always target the specific needs of your most vulnerable patients and surrounding residents, improving access and health equity despite the environmental challenges.

Recommendations:

• Engage your patients by being transparent about green initiatives and gather feedback on which priorities they’d like you to incorporate into the program as your change management process goes forward.
• Take your sustainability campaign to the community with events like vegetable seed starting, community walking or running programs, and bicycle helmet giveaways.

Looking for Other Ways to Protect Your Patients’ Futures?

Environmental sustainability in healthcare is just one important consideration for forward-thinking healthcare leaders. Stay ahead of the competition with your other initiatives by following IntelyCare’s consistently updated best practice recommendations and facility guides.