Creating the right environment

HCA Healthcare ensures safe and environmentally sound facilities with help from HealthTrust

HCA Healthcare strives to choose the best products for the environment – all with the goal of providing excellent patient care. Being a part of HealthTrust allows us to do just that.

HealthTrust, a group purchasing organization (GPO), offers solutions for total cost management across hospitals and affiliated healthcare facilities. As a founder and current member of HealthTrust, HCA Healthcare is part of an organized process of identifying and selecting contracts with suppliers for clinically recommended products and services that can improve patient and employee safety as well as promote waste management and lower operating costs.

“Clinical quality is always the first priority,” says Faye Porter, director of sustainability and education for HealthTrust. “HealthTrust also takes into consideration sustainability attributes, which will vary by product. These may include packaging, transportation and end of life/disposal considerations —things that are important not only for patients but also for physicians, clinicians and everyone working in a facility.”

HealthTrust assists facilities with environmental choices by ensuring the availability of devices that can be used more than once after going through a special process known as reprocessing. These could include items such as blood pressure cuffs and pulse oximeter probes, as well as diagnostic catheters and multiple devices used in the operating room.

All reprocessed items are FDA-approved, which means that they meet the same standards as other equipment. Facilities collect and send for reprocessing some of the medical devices they have used, which reduces waste and lowers costs for hospitals.

Sustainability planning promotes healthy environments

HCA Healthcare has an active Sustainability Steering Committee headed by Alan Yuspeh, senior vice president and chief ethics and compliance officer. The Steering Committee’s Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Task Force, chaired by Missy Eslinger, assistant vice president of value analysis, explores purchasing items that are beneficial to sustainability and the environment.

HCA Healthcare facilities always consider the impact on the indoor environment before introducing a new product or process into the facility. In addition, HCA Healthcare facilities are virtually mercury-free.

“HealthTrust offers environmentally safe chemicals on contract, and HCA Healthcare’s available portfolio includes green-certified chemicals,” Eslinger says.

“In making these choices, our facilities are supporting and championing sustainability in the facility and their local communities,” she adds.

HCA Healthcare serves on HealthTrust’s Environmental Sustainability Network (ESN), which works at a national level with industry leaders and educates vendors about expectations related to environmental choices.

“HealthTrust is helping make opportunities for sustainable choices transparent,” says Anna Ward, HCA Healthcare’s sustainability manager, who along with Eslinger serves on the ESN.

“Each and every one of us has a critical role in affecting the patient experience and demonstrating to our patients that we care about his or her welfare,” Yuspeh adds. “We continue to work with our GPO to implement solutions that consider a healthy environment for our facilities, patients, employees and communities.” 