Hospitals could track emissions, water and waste alongside patient safety
Health care providers save lives every day, but hospital operations also consume large amounts of energy and water and generate significant waste. In the United States, the health care sector is responsible for around 8.5% of national greenhouse gas emissions.
A team of researchers has developed a framework to help healthcare organizations measure and improve their environmental performance, including tracking emissions, water usage, and waste. The study, published in The Lancet: Planetary Health, emphasizes the importance of consistent tracking for identifying priorities, evaluating improvements, and integrating sustainability into routine decision-making.
The researchers propose a minimum set of sustainability measures for hospitals, including three metrics: energy consumption, water usage, and waste generation, adjusted for patient activity to allow fair comparisons between hospitals of different sizes. By incorporating sustainability into existing quality measurement systems, the framework could enable healthcare organizations to reduce their environmental impact while improving the health of communities and the planet, similar to the progress made in patient safety over the past two decades.
Brief written by urgent.news from Medical Xpress's own syndicated text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
