Thought leadership
Putting sustainable healthcare into practice
As sustainability becomes central to the healthcare agenda, systems around the world are under pressure to deliver more care with fewer resources and clinicians. Clinical Services Journal spoke with Eric De Kesel, Chief Operating Officer & Executive Vice President, Sustainability, and Dr. Emma Wright, Chief Medical Officer, at Mölnlycke Health Care, about how the company is working to support healthcare systems turn sustainable healthcare from aspiration into daily practice, connecting performance, people and planet.
What is your vision for the future of sustainable healthcare? Emma Wright (EW): Sustainable healthcare is the premise for resilience in healthcare systems today and tomorrow. It represents a future where people can enjoy optimal
health and wellbeing, delivered by efficient and reliable systems with minimal environmental impact, and where patients and healthcare professionals can feel truly fulfilled. For healthcare to be truly sustainable, we must consider the human as well as the economic and environmental factors that lay the foundation for what sustainability is. At the moment, burnout, administrative burden and systemic inefficiencies are driving many to leave the profession and are also deterring prospective students from doing healthcare degrees. Without bringing these challenges into the broader sustainability conversation, we risk missing a significant piece of the puzzle. We often speak about value-based healthcare
where success is measured by outcomes rather than the volume of activity. Unfortunately, this approach remains out of reach in many areas, for example in wound care, where reimbursement models often reward the number of visits rather than healing outcomes. The shift towards value-based wound care is especially urgent if we are to truly improve care quality and efficiency. Many often think about value in terms of the services performed rather than the outcomes they achieve – and to me, that is the wrong way around. Value-based healthcare requires a long-term approach and a funding strategy that works across care settings to follow the patient journey. It is about understanding problems deeply and crafting comprehensive sustainable
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solutions that align with clinical outcomes and are cost efficient without compromising safety, quality or wellbeing.
What is meant by the term ‘work- force sustainability’ and what are the key issues? EW: Clinicians strive to deliver excellence in patient care but are impeded by ever-expanding workloads. This is a stark reality surfacing in multiple geographies, and it places the resilience of clinical workforces in real jeopardy. Ensuring a resilient future workforce is important, but ultimately, it is about people. The emotional and mental toll shouldered by clinicians threatens both their own wellbeing, as well as the patients they treat. A recent narrative review, supported by
Mölnlycke, ‘Putting Patients at Risk: The Effect of Healthcare Provider Burnout on Patient
Care in the Operating Room,’ 1
highlights how
clinician burnout can compromise patient safety. The review links burnout to issues such as anaesthesia delays, prolonged surgery times, disrupted surgical flow, and communication breakdowns. Over the longer term, it also reveals that high staff turnover interrupts teamwork, with two thirds (73%) of surgeons reporting this issue. We want to enable improved quality of life
not only of patients but also of those who care for them – and that means considering clinician wellbeing as a crucial part of the sustainable healthcare picture.
Clinical excellence and strong outcomes
rely on a setting that safeguards clinicians’ mental health and time, allowing them to deliver truly compassionate care. Embedding this principle into our approach to health system sustainability is essential.
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