By Healthcare Facilities Today

Following the lead of a few healthcare organizations, such as Kaiser Permanente, the healthcare industry is moving forward in defining environmentally preferable purchasing standards and establishing common standards for contracting for products, according to an article in Sustainable Industries.

Greening the supply chain is important in an industry that generates 5.9 million tons of waste, according to the article. As well, applying sustainability down to the medical supplies better aligns hospital operations with the mission of healthcare. "For some products purchased, impacts on patient and staff health are of particular worry, such as cleaning solutions, polyvinyl chloride bags and tubes and other products that contain chemicals affecting or suspected of affecting human health," says the article.

A necessary component for progress in improving the supply chain is an industry-wide set of common standards as to what "environmentally preferable" actually means. Practice Greenhealth is working towards this goal, using Kaiser Permanente's Sustainability Scorecard as a stepping stone. The Scorecard functions as an in-house environmental product declaration for Kaiser, which it requires of its suppliers so that it can evaluate its purchasing decisions across 10 criteria.

Practice Greenhealth, in collaboration with five of the industry's largest group purchasing organizations as well as individual hospitals, has launched the Greening the Supply Chain initiative to standardize efforts and create transparency into healthcare product composition, packaging, end-of-life and waste impacts.

A fully realized consideration of what qualifies as an environmentally preferable product will also evaluate "the total cost of ownership, including impact and cost of exposure to chemicals of concern, cost of disposal, amount of energy and water used during a product’s use, and labor and other staff costs of maintaining and disposing something that may be hazardous to human health," says the article. Once these factors are included, environmentally preferable products can be beneficial to both the environment and the organization's bottom line.  

Read the article.