Mitigating Impacts of Healthcare Delivery on Climate and Community: Greening the OR at F&MCW

Establishing an environmentally friendly implementation kit to reduce harmful healthcare-related emissions

Full Project Name:Mitigating Impacts of Healthcare Delivery on Climate and Community: Greening the OR at F&MCWPrincipal Investigator:Christa L Wagner, PhD, Institute for Health and EquityCo-Investigator(s):Ricardo J Bello, MD, MPH, SurgeryAward Amount:$44,650

Award Date

January2024

Project Duration:18 months

Project Summary:

The world’s changing climate affects our health—in Wisconsin, there are increasingly extreme heat days, more frequent floods, and higher rates of vector-borne disease. Unless carbon emissions can be managed, Milwaukee will have three-times the number of days with temperatures over 90 degrees by 2050.

The healthcare industry contributes 8-10% of all carbon emissions in the country, many of which are generated from surgical services. Practice Greenhealth provides reporting tools and best practices for environmental sustainability to health systems and hospitals, and Froedtert Hospital is the only surgical location in the Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin (F&MCW) system with membership.

This project aims to develop a “Green OR” Implementation Kit that will support reductions in carbon emissions from surgical services across the F&MCW health system. This effort will save costs, reduce waste, and significantly reduce the carbon impact of the entire health system.

Outcomes & Lessons Learned:

Built relationships and gained support from diverse campuswide partners, which was facilitated especially by the added legitimacy that this grant gave to support campus sustainability efforts
Compiled available resources from sources such as Practice Greenhealth for the project team to create their own, unique “greening the OR” checklist, which they used to engage with staff members across departments at three Froedtert sites to assess the progress in their sustainability efforts, resulting in a roadmap that can guide future sustainability activities
Increased visibility of campus sustainability engagement and efforts, which helped validate that the small, local actions being taken by individuals or departments working in healthcare delivery are meaningful and have an impact on sustainability in the operating room
Presented at two national conferences