Healthcare organizations run intense operations - often open 24/7, using vast amounts of energy and resources, all while working to serve the local community. Often the largest employer in a community, healthcare organizations have the opportunity to drive positive change and promote sustainability initiatives. A key component to ensuring sustainability initiatives result in successful programs is through the commitment and support of leadership, constant engagement of key stakeholders, and ongoing communication celebrating and promoting these successes. Learn some strategies for effective employee engagement and build that into your HHI goals!

In order to reach our lofty waste reduction goals, Fairview realized we would need to revamp our mindset and fully embrace the mantra REDUCE, REUSE, and Recycle. To put this practice into motion, we launched "Reuse Stores" at six Fairview facilities in 2011. Instead of purchasing new, these stores reallocate excess and un-used office supplies and furniture across the system. Using our success as a catalyst, we'll discuss how anyone can launch a reuse store and in broader terms, how healthcare can gain control of the excesses beyond the recycling bin.

In 2011, Cleveland Clinic's Office for a Healthy Environment and the Center for Online Medical Education and Training co-designed EcoCaregiver™, an exciting, web-based, deep-dive, self-paced online learning experience for Cleveland Clinic's 40,000+ caregivers.

This webinar will explore key concepts outlined in EcoCaregiver(TM) and how participation in the program supports development of an informed workforce.

This seminar will provide an insider's perspective where Administrators and Clinicians can positively impact the Sustainability of a new building or renovation project. Navigating through the multifaceted world of project design is typically left to the "Design professionals." Where do these professionals need you to be an integral part of the overall design effort to make certain the project successfully meets (your) sustainability goals? What building and systems decisions can and should you influence? As increasingly more and complex strategies are employed to make health care facilities sustainable, energy efficient and greener, everyone is (and should be positively) impacted. Successful sustainable strategies from a number of health care projects will be examined providing an inside look at where you as an administrator, clinician or other non-design professional needs to and can take a leadership role in creating tremendously sustainable outcomes.

What is Bisphenol A (BPA) and why should you care? Over the last few years, a lot of attention has been paid to the use of BPA in production of plastics and resins, such as water bottles and baby bottles and as a resin lining for tinned food and beverage cans. BPA is also used in thermal paper (receipts, EKG printouts, etc), compact discs, eye glasses and other consumer products. Some animal studies show a potential for multiple health problems including reproductive disorders, diabetes and cardiovascular disease; whereas other studies show no adverse effects on these endpoints from BPA exposure.

This webinar will address some of the confusion around BPA and provide guidance in the face of uncertainty. Technical experts will provide the latest information on BPA, where it can be found in health care products, how to understand where there are health risks, and how to avoid them. U.S. EPA’s Design for the Environment Program will share results from a study of alternatives to BPA for thermal paper applications, and lessons learned about supply chain communication. Johnson & Johnson will present a BPA decision tree that can be used to evaluate potential patient exposure to BPA from medical devices that are made from polycarbonate plastic.

Practice Greenhealth’s Standardized Environmental Questions for Medical Products, endorsed by five GPOs, includes a question on BPA as a chemical of concern. This webinar will provide an opportunity to understand why this environmental attribute is of concern to health care.

In the modern era, no pharmaceutical substance has ever been successfully recovered and reused in patient care. In an era of increasing scarcity and cost, the exploration of this possibility has been overlooked. In an innovative proposal, the advantages and obstacles to such a process will be explored, along with current examples of just such a pilot program.

Control plans are a six sigma tool to ensure that improvements are maintained over time. Maintaining the gains from a sustainability project is often an "after thought" or not considered at all. Nothing is more frustrating than watching improvements erode with time. If you are going to spend time, resources, and money to make improvements, why not plan to keep them? Learn how to utilize a control plan to "sustain sustainability improvements"!

Many organizations have difficultly committing to sustainability because of competing resource demands. This presentation shows how to build a business case for sustainability and use the Triple Bottom Line to illustrate and measure performance. Building a business case for sustainability requires an organization to: 1. Understand where they are in relation to where they could be (the Gap) 2. Measure the costs and benefits of closing the Gap 3. Build an accountable plan allowing the organization to achieve its objectives and hold the gains 4. Effectively integrate the initiatives into the existing cultural fabric of the organization 5. Communicate the importance and successes of the initiative to all stakeholders This presentation also discusses utilizing a methodology that incorporates the science of sustainability, the disciplines of hospital management and the principles of LEAN process improvement. Organizational readiness, sustainability process, building the business case, measurement, reporting and practical tools will be reviewed.

Packaging waste is one the highest contributors to a hospital’s total waste volume. While of course necessary, packaging – especially secondary and tertiary packaging - costs the hospital money in several ways. Novation and StopWaste.Org piloted a program to assist Novation members in instituting reusable packaging alternatives with select distributors and suppliers. Through this effort, they identified success factors for working with suppliers and distributors as well as developed a set of tools for hospitals to use in embarking on this environmentally friendly and cost saving practice. This webinar will present an overview of packaging waste in hospitals, review the possibilities of reusable packaging in hospitals, provide a step-by-step method for achieving success, identify pitfalls to avoid and hear from two of the pilot facilities, New Haven Hospital and University of Missouri Health Care

To fully realize its benefits, sustainability must evolve beyond being a separate initiative or as an add-on to an organization’s current business model. In this webinar series, we’ll explore how companies can integrate sustainability into three key aspects of their business planning process: planning, implementation, and evaluation.

Benjamin Franklin once said: “By failing to plan, you’re preparing to fail.” This first webinar will focus on what goes into the upfront work that is so important in creating a plan that will lead to desired outcomes.

Baptist Health South Florida would like to share how we implemented our pharmaceutical waste program. We will share best practices, challenges faced, effective tools and resources to facilitate a successful roll-out at your facility.

The webinar will focus on how to conduct a survey to gauge employee interest and engagement in sustainability. It will review techniques for designing and implementing the survey to get information that is complete and relevant, using Inova's story as a practical case study.

To fully realize its benefits, sustainability must evolve beyond being a separate initiative or as an add-on to an organization’s current business model. In this webinar series, we’ll explore how companies can integrate sustainability into three key phases of their business planning process: planning, implementation, and evaluation.

This second webinar of the series will focus on how to take the plan and put it into action. Many plans that look brilliant on paper end up gathering dust on the shelf, eventually becoming irrelevant. Find out how to implement a plan in a way that balances the discipline and flexibility needed to stay focused on goals within the midst of changing circumstances.

We will present our LCA results of reusable vs. disposable blood pressure cuffs at Yale-New Haven hospital, including environmental, human health, and economic dimensions. This case study is easily used to generalize any scenario in which an institution is considering substation of reusable with disposable devices. Importantly, we will discuss how LCA could be incorporated into routine purchasing practice guidelines.

This team has collaborated over the last two+ years to develop Targeting 100!, a road map that lays the groundwork for achieving exceptionally energy efficient hospitals in the most diverse climate regions and most populous centers of the U.S. Named "Targeting 100!" for its goal of reducing energy by 60% from typical operational examples to less than 100 KBtu/SF Yr, this research opens a path to achieve these aggressive goals in practice. Through detailed energy and cost models, Targeting 100! shows that it is possible to meet the 2030 Challenge across the U.S. with very little incremental cost increase. Inspired by low energy examples world-wide and input from industry experts, overarching strategies for achieving this goal include high interior environmental quality, goal setting, energy benchmarking & tracking, and integrated teams & strategies. The team will present and discuss approaches, results, suggested strategies through a digital tool developed for implementing Targeting 100!

Sustaining and improving your hard fought advances for your hospital or healthcare system is a never ending challenge. Where do you start? What are your priorities? How do you continue the march toward a more sustainable system of care past that critical first year of implementing your Sustainability Committee? How can you elicit "More Bang for your
Buck"? We will explore the similarities between military and civilian healthcare systems and highlight the challenges present within the military healthcare system exemplified by its high churn rate of champions (33% per year), plus how we have overcome these challenges. This session will provide tools to "Sustain the Surge" within your dynamic healthcare
environment as you "Surge" ahead with your own positive efforts. We will highlight how Evans Army Community Hospital has sustained their Green Team past their first year of implementation and successfully launched their "Greening" of the Department of Surgery.

To green or not to green, that is the question. Considering the state of healthcare in the country today, is it appropriate to expend monies on creating sustainable healing environments? Is it prudent to utilize resources on these projects to make them green? Conversely, would building healthcare institutions without the tenets of green building be a disservice to those who will be treated in such a building and to those who are treating them? There exists no building type better suited to sustainable design and construction than that of healthcare. These facilities are operated 24 hours a day 7 days a week, and house folks who often have compromised immune systems. The staff often operates in these facilities for extended periods of time well beyond the 8 hours days that "normal" office building employees work. Further, like no other building type, hospitals are cleaned and maintained during normal business hours. This fact alone adds significantly to the environmental burden of the inhabitants of these buildings. Designing, constructing and operating hospitals in a sustainable manner provides better patient outcomes, lower usage of pain medications and reduced length of stay for patients. For staff, it increases productivity, staff retention and helps with recruiting efforts. As an added bonus, energy usage is generally reduced while maintaining ventilation rates at or in excess of code. Considering hospitals are second only to food service in their use of energy, significant monetary saving are possible. Maybe the question should be not whether Hospitals should be green, the better question is should they be green, silver, gold or platinum?

To fully realize its benefits, sustainability must evolve beyond being a separate initiative or as an add-on to an organization’s current business model. In this webinar series, we’ll explore how companies can integrate sustainability into three key phases of their business planning process: planning, implementation, and evaluation.

This third and final webinar in the series underscores the importance of developing comprehensive evaluation criteria to be used as an iterative process, rather than one that is linear or sequential. This is the key to being able to learn and adapt in order to keep your plan relevant and to assure its eventual success.

While the health sector has made important strives in reducing its energy usage, are health systems and hospitals doing enough to address climate change, the biggest health threat of the 21st Century? By itself, energy reduction is not enough. Hospitals have a unique opportunity to do more and become climate champions in the communities and regions they serve.
This webinar will explore the potential for the health sector to be an important force in curbing the causes and impacts of climate change.

Ascension Health achieved 5.6 percent energy use reduction and $10.1 million in cost reduction from 2008-2011 across 30 million square feet in 75 hospitals in 21 states and Washington D.C. Needing a new goal, Ascension Health joined the Department of Energy Better Buildings Challenge and committed to 20 percent energy reduction by 2020. We will present the strategies to achieve the ambitious energy reduction goal and review the funding methods used to pay for energy efficiency projects and the selection and implementation process used for the Preferred Energy Consulting Firm engagement.