WIHI - A Podcast from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement
Health & Fitness:Medicine
Date: April 5, 2012
Featuring:
How green is your hospital? Green, as you know, has become shorthand for everything from recycling to the use of safer products to shrinking one's carbon footprint to preventing pollutants from spewing into the air. There are any number of urgent reasons for the health care sector to be examining its green practices. One of them is just the sheer amount of resources hospitals consume: in the US, that’s tons and tons of water and 836 trillion BTU of energy annually. These same hospitals dispose of 6,600 tons of waste per day. Fortunately, we can all now point to visible efforts at most hospitals to “think and act” a lot greener. But even these well-intentioned efforts have a tendency to stall or lose steam, too often dependent on staff volunteers and lacking a bigger, bolder vision that cuts across the entire organization and how it's run.
Aiming to build on existing progress and to make a giant leap forward on the environmental front, three organizations are now joining forces to launch what’s being dubbed the Healthier Hospitals Initiative. The new effort is anchored by some large hospital systems in the US whose green practices are already exemplary and demonstrate the wisdom behind linking environmental stewardship to efforts to improve safety and reduce health care costs. The Healthier Hospitals Initiative hopes to enlist some 1,000 hospitals in the broad-based campaign, focused on an agenda that includes increased use of safer materials and products for patients and staff alike; reduction of energy consumption and waste; and adoption of policies to ensure sustainability.
WIHI host Madge Kaplan welcomes three guests to the program. Gary Cohen is the co-founder and president of Healthcare Without Harm and Practice Greenhealth, whose work has helped lay the groundwork for this larger initiative. Dr. Amy Collins, who leads a number of efforts at MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, Massachusetts, is helping MetroWest garner a number of environmental excellence awards. John Messervy founded the Partners Sustainability Initiative in 2008, and he has tremendous knowledge of the environmental engineering changes possible throughout a large hospital system.
WIHI: Highly Reliable Hospitals: The Work Ahead
WIHI: The Patient Will See You Now: New Technology for New Collaborations
WIHI: The Social Imperative to Demonstrate That Better Care = Lower Costs
WIHI: Have You Had "The Conversation"? Helping Loved Ones Discuss End-of-Life Preferences
WIHI: Removing Barriers to Care with Medical-Legal Partnerships
WIHI: Heard at the Forum: New Ideas and Learning from IHI's 23rd Annual National Forum
WIHI: Night Talks and Nocturnists: New Interventions for the Hospital at Night
WIHI: Health Literacy: New Skills for Health Professionals
WIHI: Organizing for Health: A Story from South Carolina
WIHI: Safety Net Hospitals: Untold Stories of Quality Transformation
WIHI: Family Caregiving, Caregivers, and Compassion
WIHI: Managing Medication Shortage: Best Practices for a Crisis
WIHI: Always Events: Raising Expectations for Patient Experience
WIHI: Payment Reform As We Speak
WIHI: Improving Health Care: The Global View
WIHI: New Models for Patients with Multiple Health and Social Needs
WIHI: Integrity On and Off the Page: A Discussion with JAMA’s (Departing) Editor-in-Chief
WIHI: Leading Across the Continuum
WIHI: Palliative Care = Quality Care
WIHI: The Power to Detect and Improve: Revisiting the IHI Global Trigger Tool and Adverse Events
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