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Sustainability Roadmap for Hospitals launched
Dec 15, 2010
Healthcare leaders needing guidance on maximizing sustainability efforts have a new resource: the Sustainability Roadmap for Hospitals (http://www.sustainabilityroadmap.org). A joint effort of the American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE), the Association for the Healthcare Environment (AHE), and the American Society for Healthcare Resource and Materials Management (AHRMM) — three personal memberships groups (PMGs) of the American Hospital Association (AHA), the Roadmap is a collective effort of Facility Engineers, Environmental Services and Materials Management Leaders and others, reflecting how different operational areas of responsibility must work together to achieve sustainability goals.
“With all the information and ratings systems that currently exist, healthcare leaders need guidance in prioritizing resources to maximize financial and environmental performance,” said Laura Brannen, M+NLB Environmental Performance Consultant. “The Roadmap provides a national clearinghouse for educational materials, sample actions plans; target-setting and tracking tools and suggestions for specific steps health care organizations can take to reduce the environmental impacts of their facilities and their operations.” M+NLB assisted with the development of the Roadmap by providing web content management and delivery consulting services.
The Roadmap helps its users navigate complex regulatory standards and environmental guidelines, while providing practical, timely information and tools they need to meet their sustainability goals. It provides a forum for facility managers and health care leaders to share information about successes and challenges.
The Roadmap also includes success stories of facilities that have gained significant benefit from a systematic approach to meeting financial and environmental performance improvement goals. One such success story is the Cleveland Clinic, which is profiled on the Roadmap site for their system-wide change-out of incandescent and halogen light bulbs to long-lasting, energy-saving LED and compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). By installing LED-fixtures system-wide and replacing 56,000 incandescent lamps with CFLs, the Cleveland Clinic saved $200,000 in labor and $38,000 in energy costs in one administrative building alone and $4M system-wide. This is the kind of success M+NLB hope the Roadmap will help to duplicate in hospitals across the nation.
"I have been working with ASHE and the AHA for many years, because I believe in the vital importance of the work they do improving building performance. The collaborative efforts of AHE and AHRMM bring an integrated approach that encompasses the whole building and operations perspective and is an important step for helping hospitals address these important issues” said Walt Vernon, M+NLB CEO. “I am honored that they asked us to help chart the course for all hospitals on this journey.”
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