The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care (The Coalition) will soon compile data from the Green Hospital Scorecard, a benchmarking tool that measures a facility’s sustainable initiatives, such as energy and water conservation, and waste management, to name a few. Participants can then benchmark their hospital’s environmental performance against itself and its peers.
Ontario-based hospitals are currently filling out the survey ahead of the February 3 deadline. Results will be revealed in March.
The Coalition took over program administration from the Ontario Hospital Association. Since then, there have been some revisions and forecasted updates to the four-year-old survey.
Notably, while the program is only available for Ontario-based hospitals, it is now being piloted in every other province across Canada. The Coalition is hoping to take the program nationally in the next couple years.
At the moment, while the survey has been translated into French, this is still in pilot stage and available to those who request it. The survey will be fully available in complete bilingual form next year. Improved survey software has also been implemented.
Another key change is that the Coalition has developed a modified scoring system, the Green Hospital Scorecard Lite, to accommodate smaller hospitals and those in rural and northern regions where certain amenities may not be available. Under the modified scorecard, small, northern and rural hospitals will not be penalized if they do not have access to blue bin recycling.
About half the hospitals in Ontario have participated in the survey in the past and The Coalition is expecting that number to increase this year.
“There are a lot of really small initiatives around hospitals to reduce waste and pollution and often times we do not hear about them,” says Samantha Putos, who works with sustainable health care programs at The Coalition. “This is an opportunity for hospitals to be recognized for those achievements and also contribute to a larger database of resources for other hospitals.”
Besides understanding how a facility stacks up against its peers, facilities are eligible for a Green Health Cares Awards, which offers recognition.
“It’s also a really great way to recognize an opportunity for savings,” Putos adds. “If they see they are using more natural gas or more electricity relative to their peers, this is an opportunity for them to look at how they can bring down cost and be more environmentally friendly.”
