Greening Healthcare - Amsterdam Global Conference on Sustainability and Transparency

I've been interested in the 'greening' of healthcare for quite awhile.

Sustainability will one day be an integral part of hospital strategic planning, but we're not there yet - read "Sustainability - It's a Marathon Not a Sprint."

US hospitals currently lack green gurus, but I'm betting within the next 2 years we'll see the first Chief Sustainability Officers (most likely at progressive organizations that are hiring Chief Experience Officers).

Without a doubt, many hospitals and healthcare systems are significantly behind the curve when it comes to sustainability efforts and greening the supply chain.

Some, like Dell Childrens MC, are getting it right early, but we don't have many comprehensive examples of what's working or what we'd save by going green.

If you want to learn about sustainability reporting in the healthcare setting, good luck... not many events are focusing on eco-efforts and sustainability initiatives for hospitals, and it is even more difficult to find real-world case studies on topics like greening the supply chain with diverse incentivization models and going carbon neutral.

Later this week I'll be blogging and tweeting live from the Amsterdam Global Conference on Sustainability and Transparency, an annual event planned by the Global Reporting Initiative.

The group has developed a comprehensive set of sustainability reporting recommendations - called the G3 Guidelines (PDF), but as of yet haven't established a sector guide for healthcare.

So, Health Management Rx readers, how would you describe the status of sustainability in the healthcare sector in your particular corner of the world? What do we need to work on? What are success stories?

Consumers are using the web to search for eco-information on other topics - global warming, cars, carbon credits, etc., but not to decide which healthcare goods/services to purchase based on enviro-friendliness and eco-awareness.

Here is a link to the conference - what would you like to learn from the sessions?

Here's what I'm interested in after reviewing the schedule:

• Carbon Disclosure (Academic Session) - hospitals are greening the supply chain; some are even considering carbon disclosure requirements with vendors...

• Climate Change (Forum) - general interest (carbon offsets? role of carbon exchange markets in healthcare)

• Employee Motivation and Commitment (Forum) - healthcare organizations focus on individual sustainability and are finding a cultural focus on environmental sustainability helps keep employees motivated and involved as stakeholders engaged in efficient operations

• Business Management and Corporate Governance Views on Sustainability Reporting Today (Arena Debate III) - another area of increasing interest to hospital/healthcare systems
  

If You're Going to Spring for Carbon Credits, Do it Right

Or just ask the US House of Representatives what kind of flack you're likely to catch for shoddy carbon usage accounting.

A hospital is like a fort - a self-contained mini-city that relies on outside commerce to keep things running.

It should be patently obvious that energy usage varies tremendously by size, number of employees (and by shift - have you examined the night/day differential?), average commute, number of suppliers using overland transport (and how many shipments you receive weekly) and a host of other factors.

You can't just pull carbon usage figures from hospitals (or other firms) of similar size and expect them to be realistic sums of your output. You also need to think carefully about how monies targeted for improving energy usage will be spent.

I've written before about the greening of hospitals via the Hospitals for a Healthier Environment program (soon to be renamed Practice Greenhealth) and other initiatives the US Energy Star program - both are good starting places for sensibly calibrating current energy usage before your leadership team sets goals for future reductions.

Also, if you're looking to adopt green initiatives because they'll save energy and money - let all of us know you like them because...they'll save energy and money.

Don't fool yourself (or your Board, or your various committees, customers, or employees) into thinking you're doing it solely to save those polar bears you saw drowning in An Inconvenient Truth.

While it's perfectly acceptable (and admirable) to have lofty motives in mind when moving your organization toward a more sustainable energy policy, it's disingenuous to present your aims as 100% pure morality candy when they also add significantly to the bottom line.

If you're looking to go carbon neutral or purchase some offset credits, for goodness sake please consult a team with experience calculating usage for a wide variety of industries.

I personally like TerraPass, but would love to hear about firms others are using to figure out smarter energy policies, including the purchase of carbon credits.

Health Management & Sustainability - It's Not a Sprint, It's a Marathon

Sustainability. Seems like I can't leave the house/office without tripping over the latest initiative to reduce waste, conserve resources, build green and construct a school/neighborhood/vehicle for the environmentally friendly future. Don't get me wrong - this is a good thing.

Fortunately, there's much more to the concept than laying a snazzy new bamboo floor or buying fluorescent bulbs (although that's a good start, and I really do like the look partnered with a concrete recycled particulate kitchen counter...).

Hospital/healthcare entities have more of an opportunity than most to move towards true sustainability...what could be more vital to sustain than a human life (other than collective human health)?

So here's the question: Does sustainability (in every sense of the word) have a necessary role to play in our mission as healing organizations? What about the opportunity to progress from a perspective of siloed, disparate disease treatments towards managing a person's well-being along interconnected points on a larger, circular health continuum?

If this all sounds a bit too Kumbaya, let me get back to basics. One of my favorite monthly reads, MediaPost's Media magazine, ran a great article in the Feb 07 issue. In "Green Marketing: Fresh Marketing Perspective," Lynn Russo Whylly (p.7) quotes Will Brent, SVP of Weber Shandwick.

"Sustainability is becoming the benchmark entry point," says Brent. "Companies that don't embrace it are going to be behind the eight ball. Whether it's from a natural-resources perspective or business-health perspective, or consumer-perception point of view, those are all things that encompass sustainability; without it, you'll be losing out." Thanks Will. Well said.

So is sustainability simply the continuum of care examined through another lens? It's all about the sustainability of health, for each individual consumer, at each point in his/her life where help and healing is needed most.

A vast oversimplification, it's true, however, can sustainability act as a synonym to health management? Would putting a new face on an old debate help us break out of the disease/discharge/disease cycle?

Hospitals (some) have gotten better at seeing and serving micro segments of the market...communicating with specific consumers inside traditional service lines (with offerings like prenatal yoga, diabetic cooking classes for young adults, etc.).

But these efforts are still centered on a condition, not a consumer. Service lines are still primarily oriented around ways to treat disease, and therein lies the rub.

Hospitals have historically considered patients to be in one of three 'phases of matter' (excuse the pun, and no, I'm not referring to solid, liquid, or gas):
1. Alive.
2. Dead.
3. Sick (the huge gray area between 'alive' and 'dead').

So how does your administrative/executive team view patients, really? How do you define "health management" and your organization's obligation to provide it? Are we doing the right thing for the wrong reasons? How does your organization rectify profit & loss with holistic health management and evidence based practice?

We sustain their health, they sustain our budget (or not), but can the partnership be more caring and symbiotic? As a patient, as a person, as a professional with an optimistic outlook on the future of the field, I hope so.

PS - If you want to move your hospital from the theoretical (vision of care) to the practical (physical environment of care) in terms of sustainability, check out the Hospitals for a Healthy Environment Program (H2E). Visit www.h2e-online.org.

Disclaimer: No, I am not an H2E staff member, but I have toured H2E partner hospitals and they're doing great, green things. A bit about H2E from their site:

"H2E was jointly founded by the American Hospital Association, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Health Care Without Harm, and the American Nurses Association. To achieve our vision, mission and goals, H2E is educating health care professionals about pollution prevention opportunities and providing a wealth of practical tools and resources to facilitate the industry’s movement toward environmental sustainability."