The major health systems across the nation are teaming up to move the health care market to a greener future. HC+O News sat down to learn more about the movement from Seema Wadhwa, director of program management for the Healthier Hospitals Initiative. Wadhwa also serves as director of sustainability at Urban Ltd. and for Inova Health System.

Q: What is the Healthier Hospitals Initiative?

A: The Healthier Hospitals [project] is an initiative that was started by 11 sponsoring health systems and three non-governmental organizations to support the movement of the health care industry towards environmental sustainability.

What’s unique about the HHI is it’s an initiative that spurred from within the industry of systems that recognize the critical role that hospitals play and the opportunities they have to really make an impact on their community and on the health of their community. Also, [they recognize] the fiscal benefit of incorporating sustainability initiatives in day-to-day operations.

Q: How will the HHI set out to achieve its goals?

A: These 11 health systems and sponsoring organizations came together to identify six challenges for the industry to take on, and while these challenges don’t address all of the impacts in the health industry they are a platform to work from.

Those 6 areas are engaged leadership, healthier food, leaner energy, less waste, safer chemicals and smarter purchasing.

You’ll note that engaged leadership is the first one because it really is the foundation. That’s where success can be centered. That can include being engaged within the health system, with the leaders of the health system as well as engaging leaders and the community.

Q: How were the six areas selected?

A: One of the key things was we wanted to have measurable goals and baselines that everyone could work from. Essentially, these six areas were ones that we could define goals for and have successes in these areas, and they’re common platforms across all hospitals.

Every hospital is engaged in [activities like] purchasing, and using energy — it’s across the sector — so that helped establish those six challenge areas.

Within the challenge areas, you can participate in three levels depending on where you are on your sustainability journey. We wanted to be inclusive of work that’s already been done.

For instance, for less energy, the focus is on reducing incrementally percentages, so whether that’s 3 percent, 6 percent or 10 percent of energy use, those all correspond to different levels.

The other qualifier here is, as I mentioned before, this is based on data. It’s data-driven where information will actually be put on to an IHI existing [Institute for Healthcare Improvement] ExtraNet. Essentially we wanted to be able to, at the end of the three years, tell a story about the impact that we had with facts to back that up.

Q: What makes the HHI different from other initiatives aiming to drive the green health care market?

A: Well, one thing I’d really like to highlight is this is a free initiative for all — there’s absolutely zero barriers to entry. There are a lot of free resources we’ve developed, like comprehensive how-to guides for each one of those areas.

Our website is focused on building a network and community for everyone to be engaged, so that’s one differentiator from the get-go. But the other differentiator is, to be really able to make this impact is. this was an initiative spurred from the industry within itself. This is not a third-party or government or regulatory agency saying this is what needs to be done — this is the industry recognizing its role and responsibility.

The impetus for how this started is very unique, and the goal of this also may be very different from other systems. This is not necessarily a rating system such as the LEED system, it’s a benchmarking tool with a goal of moving the industry and of having one common voice to work together and say, ‘This is what we’d like to achieve,’ and partnering with those who can make that happen.

Q: Why is there a three-year end date for the Initiative?

A: Well, this is really an initiative — the healthier hospitals initiative is not an organization. It’s essentially a meeting of the minds, and you know, many campaigns have start and end dates.

It’s also based off of the IHI model for the Million Lives campaign and built from their successful models. That is part of the framework of how this was formulated.

Q: How will the initiative be inclusive of existing sustainability measures?

A: A lot of health systems have engaged in a personal sustainability journey — in fact, many of the sponsoring health systems or hospitals are far long in their journey, and many of them are leaders in sustainability.

But everyone has unique focuses — each hospital may be working on different things — whereas now we’ve set the target that these are the six things we’re working on together. That is different. We’ve all decided we want to work on and move the market together.

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