Hospitals and Sustainability – Julie Moyle of Practice Greenhealth

It’s time for our first check-up on hospitals and sustainability.

With coronavirus upending our way of life and infecting so many people, it’s critical that our hospitals continue to operate. Sustainability ensures hospitals can continue operations in times of stress, and it also helps hospitals save money, reduce their impact on the environment, and make their communities more healthy. In this episode, we break down how hospitals can operate more sustainably and highlight some compelling examples from leaders like Boston Medical Center and Cleveland Clinic.

We also have insights from someone well positioned to tell us about sustainability trends generally in hospitals, PLUS what it’s like to administer healthcare first-hand with sustainability in mind. Julie Moyle is both the Member Engagement Manager at Practice Greenhealth and a Staff Nurse at Avista Adventist Hospital Ambulatory Surgery Center.

Note From NewGen Surgical Team:  There is an excellent article outline of the podcast at the end outlining the fantastic and inspiring programs at many leading healthcare systems across the country are doing to mitigate their environmental impact. NewGen Surgical is highlighted as follows:

“ Material Use and Waste

• Overall hospitals generate over 5 million tons of waste each year.

• Let’s first talk plastic. Practice Greenhealth estimates that 25% of the waste that a hospital generates is plastic. A single hysterectomy, an operation to remove a woman’s uterus, can produce 20 pounds of waste, most of which is plastic. Single-use plastic is attractive for hospitals because it’s cheap, durable, easily tossed out, and each new fresh plastic container or covering offers a newly sterile environment. Still, there are some single use plastic applications that could be replaced.
  • Another example is the needle counter box, which is used to facilitate correct count and disposal of needles and blades during surgical procedures. NewGen Surgical has developed a sustainable needle counter box, eliminating 93% of the plastic waste associated with a product used in nearly every operating room procedure.”

No need to hang around the waiting room – come listen right now!