Sustainability in healthcare – a path to financial savings
Sustainability is increasingly recognized as an essential element of healthcare quality. And hospitals worldwide are now taking action to achieve sustainable healthcare. As well as delivering low-carbon, resilient, and equitable care that positively impacts patients, the workforce, and the wider community, these hospitals are also benefitting from financial savings.
It is not widely known that sustainability initiatives can be rewarding for hospital operations. The majority of information on sustainability is not tailored to the unique features of hospitals and health systems. Hospital leaders might assume that addressing sustainability requires massive upfront expenses with a long return on investment (ROI). In fact, a wide range of sustainability initiatives in hospitals offer significant opportunities to drive cost savings.
The healthcare sector has a very large opportunity to advance on sustainability. Although making progress can be challenging, tools and information are available to help hospitals and healthcare systems to accelerate sustainability, providing guidance on specific actions and opportunities to consider.
Planning and acting: 1, 2, 3…
Step one: Getting a clear understanding of the areas where there is room for improvement. There are many places to start a hospital’s sustainability journey. For example, identifying the overconsumption of certain medical items or power.
Step two: Finding relevant guidance on where to focus efforts. Achieving sustainability in healthcare is a journey that requires commitment and efforts from both hospital leadership and the workforce. It needs to be based on a clear set of priorities to place focus on these initiatives being successful, and to ensure that resources are used efficiently.
Step three: Starting to deliver the actions in the plan. These will include behaviour changes that optimize the use of resources, assessing and enhancing processes to improve efficiency, and addressing consumption patterns that influence the supply chain.
This collection of ROI-related sustainability initiatives can help you to start planning and acting. Now is the time to develop a strong sustainability strategy – and generate financial savings for your hospital.
Ideas that deliver savings from around the world
Low-carbon care: Clinical practices
Transform your opportunity areas into financial wins.
Integrating a low-carbon care approach into your clinical practices can generate significant savings. For example, replacing desflurane with low-flow sevoflurane could save an estimated 9,600 USD per year.
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Low-carbon care: Clinical practices
Guided steps can lead to improved environmental and financial performance.
Reducing unnecessary tests, such as eliminating a second blood test from the preoperative workup for laparoscopic cholecystectomies, saves over 3,700 USD annually in Sussex, UK.
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Use of environmental resources
Assessing how your organization uses environmental resources helps you strategize your investments. A faucet and shower head replacement programme in a US hospital saved 12,900 USD in water and sewer costs annually, plus an additional 7,200 USD in energy savings by reducing the amount of hot water used.
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Low-carbon care: Clinical practices
In today's competitive landscape, being environmentally conscious while finding ways to reduce costs is crucial. In fact, if US hospitals nationwide implemented waste management interventions, savings would exceed 700 million USD.
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Employee engagement and empowerment
Engaging and empowering your staff can lead to improved sustainability. Changing staff behaviours is crucial to reduce energy consumption. England’s NHS projects that energy awareness campaigns can produce healthcare savings of 79 million pounds in five years.
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Procurement and supply chain management
Procurement is one of the biggest sources of emissions in hospitals. Environmentally preferable purchasing practices can create savings. In the US, Kaiser Permanente saves tens of millions of dollars yearly through systemwide implementation of these practices.
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Low-carbon care: Clinical practices
Translate successful sustainability practices from others into your own organization. At a hospital in the Philippines, reprocessing personal protective equipment (PPE) and using washable PPE resulted in savings over USD 223k per year.
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Low-carbon care: Clinical practices
A low-carbon care approach to practices can reduce the length of stay and result in financial savings. In France, opting for day-case surgery to stop acid reflux instead of inpatient stay was associated with savings of €3,921 per surgery with comparable functional outcomes and improvements in quality of life.
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Use of environmental resources
Without significant expense, a hospital in the Philippines implemented water conservation initiatives such as reusing wastewater to flush toilets and water gardens, and harvesting rainwater for laundry purposes, resulting in monthly savings of approximately 2700 USD.
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Use of environmental resources
In the Philippines, a hospital achieved savings of 5,200 USD by installing solar panels. With more financial resources available, the hospital can increase subsidies for diagnosing and treating low-income patients.
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Low-carbon care: Clinical practices
A hospital in Costa Rica is reducing its emissions from anaesthetic gases through practices such as using sevoflurane instead of desflurane, replacing nitrous oxide with air, reducing gas flow, and using intravenous anaesthesia. The hospital estimates this will translate into savings of 15,000 USD each year.
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Low-carbon care: Clinical practices
An Argentinian hospital moved from using one blood tube for each area to using one for all areas. They save 100,000 tubes a year (annual savings of approximately 12,000 USD), and avoid 1 ton of biomedical waste (saving 1,200 USD on waste disposal). A shortened blood collection process also improves the patient experience.
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Low-carbon care: Clinical practices
Adequate maintenance in operating rooms is key for environmental and financial sustainability. Through addressing nitrous oxide gas leaks in its operating rooms, a Brazilian hospital was able to reduce emissions by more than 50% and save 14,000 USD.
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Take action today with the Geneva Sustainability Centre
With information and guidance, hospitals can improve sustainability and achieve significant financial savings across the organization. The Sustainability Accelerator Tool provides hospitals with the insights needed to target efforts and define priorities to make progress on sustainability. SAT provides the information and resources to start advancing your sustainability journey today.
The Geneva Sustainability Centre developed the SAT in collaboration with Deloitte to provide an assessment framework that digitally empowers hospitals and healthcare leaders to drive sustainable, low-carbon, equitable, and resilient healthcare.
