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

Project Description Narrative:

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.