While the federal government has made clear that issues like climate change and sustainability have been deprioritized, that hasn’t stopped some hospital leaders from continuing to pursue those goals.
In fact, according to the latest sustainability benchmark report from Health Care Without Harm and Practice Greenhealth, the opposite may be true. The health sustainability nonprofit’s annual report found that among almost 493 hospital partners, there’s been a reduction of roughly 185,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases and more than $203 million in annual savings due to sustainability initiatives.
“Despite the shifting political landscape, our partners are still deeply committed to their sustainability strategies,” Sarah Irwin, associate director of sustainability solutions at Practice Greenhealth, told us. “Some of our partners might be doing that in slightly different ways than they did before…but the work is still happening—and in fact, they’re doubling down.”
Rating performance
For Washington-based nonprofit Providence Health, Beth Schenk, chief environmental stewardship officer, told us the health system is approaching sustainability through mitigation, procurement, resilience, and advocacy.
“[We’re] working to address the problems that we can to help move healthcare to a way of operating that’s more compatible with a healthy planet,” she said.
Providence’s 51 hospitals and 1,014 clinics adhere to its WE ACT framework, which focuses on creating sustainable initiatives around waste, energy and water, agriculture and food, chemicals, and transportation. Each facility has been rated on a scorecard annually since 2019 based on data collected from 150+ categories tied to the five themes in the framework.
In 2020, the environmental stewardship team set a goal of becoming more carbon negative by 2030 and cutting between 3%–5% of emissions per facility each year, reaching a 23% cut in its hospitals so far. Schenk confirmed the health system is on track to achieve both goals. This has resulted in $32 million in savings associated with the stewardship programs for 2024 and $40 million for 2023, she added.
Having “accurate, transparent, verifiable data in order to justify and defend different requests for expensive finances, how are we going to measure our progress, etc.” was an important part of committing to these goals, she said.
According to a 2024 blog post, Providence has reduced Scopes 1, 2, and 3 carbon emissions—which include emissions an organization directly and indirectly emits—by 18% since 2019 and has saved $15 million annually in conservation efforts. For reference, a 2023 analysis of multiple databases found healthcare made up between 15% and 50% of Scopes 1 and 2 emissions and 50% to 75% of Scope 3 emissions—that accounts for between 4% and 5% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
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This also aligns with what Practice Greenhealth found: Among its partners that reported 2024 Scope 1 and 2 emissions, there was an 8.7% decrease overall.
Providence’s post goes on to state that 100 of its facilities run fully on renewable energy and 85% of its hospitals have deactivated “wasteful” nitrous oxide piping. Further, business travel has operated at a 50% reduction since 2019, according to the post.
Reuse, reprocess
Reducing plastic use features heavily in the Greenhealth study, too, with almost 50% of its partners saying they’ve made efforts to reduce plastic use in their facilities.
The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, for example, has a partnership with medical reprocessing manufacturer Stryker’s Sustainability Solutions, which reprocesses devices like cables, catheters, and pulse oximeters, saving $1.4 million between July 2023 to July 2024.
According to Ohio State’s Environmental Sustainability Consultant Cecil Okotah, since the program was implemented in 2021, the university has saved close to $4 million and been able to divert almost 60 tons of waste from landfills between 2018 and 2024.
Practice Greenhealth estimated 20%–25% of hospital waste is plastics in 2024, but less than 5% is actually recycled, according to a recent study.
The university also has sustainability initiatives to decrease energy use in its facilities, increase composting and recycling efforts, and implement green building design, Okotah said.
Mapping out the future
For Practice Greenhealth, the more data it can get from hospital partners the better, as that can serve as a roadmap for other institutions. Especially since partners can be at any stage, from “extremely new” to “fairly mature,” Irwin said.
Hospitals that are newer to sustainability initiatives then get the opportunity to learn from veteran teams and see how they can implement what’s already proven to be effective, she said.
As for one of the areas that needs the most continued attention? Irwin said transportation is where she thinks there’s “more that we can be doing and supporting” since it’s so far-reaching—encompassing everything from daily commutes to the Scope 3 emissions from materials being flown or driven to a facility—and the data tends to come from third-party resources.
For Schenk, moving into a place where more institutions take sustainability “seriously” is an integral next step in implementing industrywide change.
“We’re here for health,” she said. “I think in healthcare we have even more of an obligation to not to cause harm and also to be ready and planning and responding to the harm that is underway.”