HCA Healthcare reflects on Earth Day

Earth Day 2018 provides an opportunity for HCA Healthcare to celebrate the planet and our caregivers’ work towards a healthier environment for our patients, our 240,000 colleagues and the communities we serve.

HCA Healthcare’s sustainability efforts extend beyond today’s worldwide environmental observance. Many of our colleagues have assisted in their communities by:

• park and river clean-up efforts,
• encouraging bike-to-work,
• carpooling,
• electric vehicle parking,
• clothing drives,
• changing from fluorescent to LED lighting, and
• participating in local composting.

HCA Healthcare Sustainability Plan

Sustainability coordinators – appointed at HCA Healthcare-affiliate hospitals in the U.S. – are responsible for implementing our organization’s sustainability plan. The plan is approved by HCA Healthcare’s multi-disciplinary Sustainability Steering Committee and supported by four task forces in the following areas:

• Energy and Water – HCA Healthcare’s Energy Service Center monitors building systems to identify optimization opportunities and alert facilities to actions for conserving energy.
• Construction and Major Renovation – Participates in environmentally conscious construction or remodeling by reusing or recycling construction materials, prefabricating building materials, using wood products from sustainable forest management providers, and increasing recycled content in building materials. The task force also assists various HCA Healthcare projects to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) status.
• Environmentally Preferable Purchasing – Contributes to environmentally conscious purchasing by making items available to buy that are beneficial to sustainability, such as Green-certified chemicals, reusable items, and FDA-approved reprocessed devices. All HCA Healthcare facilities have significantly reduced mercury-containing devices through this purchasing option.
• Waste Stream – Reduce items going to landfill, decrease waste and conserve resources with disposal plans, including increasing recycling of cardboard, paper, aluminum, wood, and rechargeable batteries.

In actively pursuing sustainability, HCA Healthcare hospitals and its other sites of care are supporting and championing a healthy environment for our facilities, patients, employees and our local communities.

Every person can make a difference on this annual holiday and throughout the year. How will you?

As a Practice Greenhealth member, HCA Healthcare continues to seek to reduce health care’s environmental footprint through resource conservation and other measurable environmental improvements. HCA Healthcare is also a founding sponsor of the Greening the Operating Room Initiative; a founder of the Healthier Hospitals Initiative; and member of HealthTrust’s Environmental Sustainability Network.