COVER STORY ■


integrating sustainable design and building techniques with environmen- tally sound operational practices to create true healing environments.


The group leads and supports a number of initiatives that further the adoption of sustainable, eco-friendly practices:


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Practice Greenhealth launched the Greening the OR Initiative in 2010 to help the health care industry gener- ate cost savings, maintain worker and patient safety and, most importantly, reduce the environmental footprint of operating rooms;


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The group has announced the forma- tion of the Greening the Supply Chain Initiative that supports hospitals and GPOs by engaging businesses in the demand for more environmentally preferable products (EPP) within


health care facilities, GPOs and in the business marketplace;


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In April 2011, Practice Green- health and Citi, an organization that promotes the use of renew- able energy, announced The Healthcare Renewable Energy Initiative. This program offers transparent and flexible financing options for health systems and hospitals seeking to reduce en- ergy consumption and becoming more energy efficient; and


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Practice Greenhealth supports the Chicago Green Health Care Initia- tive, which is committed to gener- ating cost-effective and persistent greenhouse gas reductions while improving the environmental, eco- nomic, public health and social conditions in the community.


We had full support of the management to go green; not all ASCs can say that.”


— Eddy Wenzel, RN, Visionary Enterprises Inc.


present and hand dryers instead of pa- per towels.


Importance of Practicing Green It is easier for an ASC to revamp systems and implement green than a hospital be- cause ASCs are smaller and more con- fined and it’s easier to control the cost, Wenzel says. “Within 24 months, we were able to include assessment, recov- ery, post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) and overnight stay areas. It was easy to walk over and include everybody and have a champion in each area. It gave the staff more ownership and helped build camaraderie between units.” Practicing green is good for the


staff, Shieh agrees: “It is better from a moral point of view. We are hoping


that, with Practice Greenhealth, we will be able to educate staff and get them excited about practicing green. Our goal is to make our center the first green center within the group and, then, spread the message.” Koos agrees with Wenzel that it is easier to turn an ASC green “because we’re a smaller organization and it’s easier to implement policies more quickly and authoritatively,” he says. His ASC is a 5,000-square-foot, sin- gle-specialty facility that has two ORs and a recovery room. It employs 16 people and performs 10 to11 general anesthetic outpatient surgeries a day, four days a week. Management backing also helps in greening a facility. “We had full support


of the management to go green; not all ASCs can say that,” Wenzel says. “Our director was a champion to push things through. We had the bragging rights be- cause our ASC was the first in the area to move to this on a big scale. We were doing paper, plastic and getting a lot of people—10 to 15—involved. Every- body had responsibility for a piece.” It is particularly important to implement green practices in ASCs, Wenzel says, because ASCs have high case volumes and, therefore, high can- cellation rates. “What do you do with the supplies from those canceled cases if you don’t recycle?” he asks. “We give them to mission trips to Third World countries and to surgical tech programs at local community colleges. The surgical tech director at the col- lege also recycles and gives them to the homeless shelters.” Koos, a Corporate Social Respon- sibility (CSR)-certified surgeon, says that “CSR practices need to be infused within the fabric of how every corpora- tion is run. These can range from com- plex initiatives to simple campaigns.” He started a program called the “Tooth Lost, Tree Gained” campaign and plants a tree for every tooth he removes. He works with an organization called Trees for The Future. Together they plant more than 10,000 trees a year. The green team at ORA Oral Sur-


gery & Implant Studio is constantly looking for ways to improve its practice. “We need to look into advancing our mission further by trapping and captur- ing volatile medical anesthesia gases,” Koos says. “There are new systems that do that. We would have to retrofit our current system to make this work, and this type of project has a limited return on investment, but it’s our corporate so- cial responsibility to do things the right way for our patients and the surround- ing community.”


ASC FOCUS APRIL 2013 15


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