A more sustainable U.S. healthcare system spells huge hospital savings by preventing expensive hospital waste.
What are your primary concerns when you visit a hospital? The quality of your loved ones’ lives? Receiving a life-changing diagnosis? How your insurance and finances will affect your future care?
Chances are, hospital waste and the management of all the trash bins surrounding you are the furthest things from your mind.
But when it comes to hospital waste, healthcare sustainability is a public priority.
In recent case studies, Health Care Sustainability Initiative found that the U.S. the healthcare industry has the ability to save as much as $15 billion over the next 10 years simply by adopting more sustainable practices.
An infrastructural redesign of a hospital’s waste management program translates into energy efficiency, waste reduction, and environmentally-friendly purchasing trends. In turn, these efforts respectively save millions of dollars and promote the positive health of the surrounding community and set higher standards for the nation’s well-being.
Wasted Resources/Abundant Misspending
Not unlike other global healthcare providers, the U.S. healthcare system is up against challenges from the proliferation of aging Americans, widespread chronic disease, limited primary care providers, and a lack of funding.
The financial urgency of solving hospital waste issues is no false positive. Hospitals’ second highest expense—right behind labor—is supply chain costs. Sustainability Roadmap to Hospitals reported that the average hospital provider spends more than $72 million, nearly one-third its annual operations budget, a year on supply chain functions.
Just about 7,000 tons of daily waste is generated by hospitals, costing $10 billion in yearly disposal costs.
Major trends in 2016 already point towards smarter designs, including integrated care platforms that offer flexibility in the rapidly-changing clinical world. In turn, hospitals and health systems are shifting their focus to sustainable healthcare facilities and higher quality practices in the long run.
While healthcare facilities are the second highest ranking buildings in national energy use per square foot—fourth for total energy use—data collected from the U.S. Green Building Council suggests roughly one percent of healthcare buildings are registered with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), let alone certified. That’s about 0.4 percent.
The first healthcare structure to meet LEED platinum certification criteria was in 2007. The Cornell study pointed out that was seven years after the first office building was bestowed with a LEED Platinum status. And of 581 LEED Platinum buildings in the U.S. in 2013, merely 13 were healthcare facilities.
“Historic data shows that current trends in energy consumption indicate a need to accelerate the sustainability movement in healthcare. Making healthcare buildings sustainable will make a significant difference in national energy use, ” explained Assistant Professor of Design and Environmental Analysis, and Co-director of Cornell’s Health Design Innovations Lab, Rana Zadeh.
Energy
More than 136 million people visit the emergency room each year, all relying on hospitals’ modern resources. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, currently the 3,040 largest hospitals in the country use over five percent of the energy consumed by the entire commercial sector.
Surprisingly, medical technology and life-saving machines only make up a small portion of energy consumed at hospitals. The main culprit is climate control, water heating, and lighting. Climate control alone can range from 16 percent in the south to 40 percent in northern states.
In its 2015 Hospital Energy and Water Benchmarking Survey results, the energy efficiency and sustainable design engineer firm Grumman/Butkus Associates noticed while the 20-year trend of diminished fossil fuel use continued, electricity use was not declining.
Carbon footprint results remained pretty steady over time: roughly 60 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent per square foot, each year, but trending slowly into lower numbers after 2010.
“Hospitals are investing in efficiency measures and making progress, but have much further to go. Some of the low-hanging fruit is gone, but there are still many cost-effective opportunities remaining for reducing energy usage and costs,” explained G/BA Chairman Daniel L. Doyle.
Of the 117 facilities surveyed, some healthcare facilities used over 200,000 British Thermal Units (BTU) per square foot in fossil fuels over the course of one year, versus that of the general-mid range of facilities at 150,00 BTU per square foot each year, and those using 100,000 BTU per square foot annually.
In term of electricity, several hospitals consumed over 40 kilowatt-hours per square foot, compared to mid-range consumers (25 kWh per square foot), and few with less than 20 kWh per square foot each year.
Doyle noted that “The downward usage trend reflects a movement to eliminate city-water-cooled equipment, as well as the increased use of low-flow and occupancy-based plumbing fixtures. Water usage is an emerging issue. There is still much room for improvement.”
These improvement efforts are contingent upon taking a few first steps.
First, retrocommission and the examination of the facilities where underperforming equipment can be identified. According to the Health Care Sustainability Initiative, retrocommissioning alone can cut up to 15 percent of a building’s energy use.
Next, improving light sources, fixtures, and controls, making the most of natural sunlight, and, in turn reduce the overall load from equipment use.
Optimizing airflow—through upgraded fan systems, efficient ventilation, and maximizing free cooling whenever available—can lead to decreasing the 8 percent of moving conditioned air and the 25 percent of energy spent solely on heating and cooling in a hospital.
Upgrading to a properly sized HVAC system, working with local utility companies, Energy Star, American Society for Healthcare Engineering’s Energy to Care Program, installation of Healthcare Clean Energy and Practice Greenhealth’s Healthcare Energy Impact Calculator tool, and consideration of LEED certification are all great options for optimal energy efficiency.
. Incorrect disposal of items like IV bags and paper towels into red waste bags alone can cause an increase of five times the cost.
The first step in any medical waste disposal management is to minimise waste and to ensure that it is properly segregated at source. If general waste is mixed with any infectious or hazardous waste cannot be segregated and all of it then must be treated as though it is infectious or hazardous.