Welcome to the MDH2E February 2012 News Roundup!

This month has brought warm weather and cool sustainability initiatives!

This edition includes updates on:

• The Maryland Health Care Sustainability Leadership Council
• UMMC’s Trailblazer Education Event: Energy Conservation – March 1
• Eco Hospital Jeopardy!
• Hospital Earth Day Activities
• MedStar Harbor Hospital’s Fresh Start on Recycling
• MedStar’s System-Wide Environmental Leadership Council
• Civista Medical Center’s Green Team Webpage
• Kaiser Permanente Purchasing PVC- and DEHP-free IV bags
• Chemotherapy Drugs Put Nurses at Doubled Risk for Miscarriage
• Nursing Updates
• Pharmaceutical Waste Updates
• Sustainable Food Updates
• And much, MUCH more!

Enjoy, and please let us know what’s going green at your facility!

Best,

The MD H2E Team

Looking for a low-cost, high yield green program for your hospital, which will benefit patients and staff alike? Come to University of Maryland Medical Center for a FREE event on March 1^st to learn easy changes you can make!

Trailblazer Education Series

ENERGY CONSERVATION

University of Maryland Medical Center with BGE—March 1st, 9-11 am

The green initiatives started by hospitals not only reduce our impact on the planet – they can cut costs, create goodwill with the community, and improve employee health and morale!

Which is exactly what University of Maryland Medical Center has done. Last year UMMC made a thorough assessment of its lighting needs and made comprehensive changes:

Turn off lights when not in use, use daylight when it’s sufficient, replace inefficient light bulbs with more efficient ones, install occupancy sensors and photo cell sensors, and establish a baseline to monitor changes. UMMC listened to nurses and implemented a quiet/low light time on patient floors! 

Learn from UMMC staff on programmatic issues and hear from Baltimore Gas & Electric on available grants and rebates to implement energy conservation programs.

To learn more, go to http://mdh2e.org/awards-recognition/2011-trailblazer-awards/

To register for this FREE event, please send your name, title, facility name, e-mail, and phone to Englund@son.umaryland.edu. Please RSVP by February 24^th.

Attendance is open to all. However, priority will be given to hospital and health care employees when limitations occur.

Welcome to the MDH2E January 2012 News Roundup. We know that the New Year will bring sustainable successes to hospitals across Maryland!

In this edition, find:

• The MD H2E Trailblazer Event Dates Announced
• Interview with Colleen Cusick, Chair of the Maryland Health Care Sustainability Leadership Council
• The Greener GBMC Dining Room
• Good Samaritan’s Grown for Good Garden Project
• Updates from Union Memorial, Anne Arundel Medical Center, and Carroll Hospital Center
• Sustainable Food Updates – Farm to Institution Conference, Chefs and Cooks Training, and More
• Nurses Taking Action
• And More!

Enjoy, and please let us know what’s going green at your facility!

*Correction: On page 5 of the newsletter, Union Memorial Hospital is erroneously listed as participating in the Chefs and Cooks Training. It was Union Hospital of Cecil County, whose Chef William Morgan is pictured and participated as a chef instructor for the event.

Click here to read the article featuring MD H2E award winners Anne Arundel Medical Center, Carroll Hospital Center, Good Samaritan Hospital, Union Hospital of Cecil County, and University of Maryland Medical Center. Nurses Denise Choiniere, of UMMC, and Barbara Sattler, of University of Maryland School of Nursing, also won awards for their sustainability work in health care.

CleanMed 2012 – April 30- May 2

Denver, CO

Colorado Convention Center & The Hyatt Regency Denver

Presented by Health Care Without Harm and Practice Greenhealth, CleanMed is the only place health care professionals come together from around the world to share best practices and keep up on current sustainability trends. It’s the place to connect with leaders in health care sustainability.

CleanMed attracts leaders and key decision makers from across the industry, convening health care professionals, university researchers, designers of professional buildings, and vendors of cleaner and safer products and services.

Five Reasons you Need to Attend CleanMed 2012
1. Discover new strategies for today’s issues
2. Network with leaders in health care sustainability
3. Attend education sessions with practical takeaways
4. See unparalleled exhibits in the expo hall
5. Learn from the best and the brightest

Go to www.cleanmed.org to learn more!

MDH2E December 2011 News Roundup

Welcome to the December 2011 edition of the MD H2E News Roundup. With our 4^th annual conference, Environmental Excellence in Health Care: Measuring Success, a few weeks behind us, here’s a chance to look back at the presentations, discussions, and revelations of November 10^th.

In this special edition, find:

• Presentation PowerPoints and videos
• The panel discussion, “Implementing and Measuring Sustainability Initiatives at a Community Hospital”
• Trailblazer Award Winners
• Award Winning Nurses
• Community Benefits and Sustainability
• And more!

Enjoy, and have a happy holidays!

Excerpted from”Green Health Care,” published in the December 2011/January 2012 issue of Organic Gardening:

In 2005, Sattler founded Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (MD H2E). Today, the organization boasts a membership comprising three-quarters of the hospitals in the state. Their efforts include recycling and composting, reduced reliance on toxic chemicals, and environmentally preferable purchasing policies. “We’re seeing the hospitals begin to adopt an environmental ethic,” Sattler says, “so it’s part of the fabric of the decisions they’re making.”

That doesn’t make it easy. “An institution with 7,000 employees and 800 patients on any given day, it’s a huge operation,” says Denise Choiniere, the sustainability manager at the University of Maryland Medical Center. In 2006, as a cardiac-care nurse in intensive care, Choiniere launched a recycling program that now diverts nearly 100,000 batteries annually from incineration. Other initiatives include a 50 percent reduction in regulated medical waste, high-efficiency vacuum pumps to reduce water consumption by 5 million gallons annually, and a program to divert discarded drugs from municipal wastewater treatment facilities that often can’t remove them.

Louise Mitchell, MD H2E’s sustainable foods program manager, promotes the Healthy Foods in Health Care Pledge by connecting hospital food-service directors and chefs with local farmers to increase their purchase of local, sustainable foods. She also provides technical support for other healthy food initiatives. One outcome of this support is that 17 health-care facilities statewide now host farmers’ markets or farm stands on their campuses. This fall, she hosted a training program for kitchen staff interested in purchasing and preparing sustainably produced meat and poultry from small, local farms. “Hospitals have shifted toward having more food delivered that’s already prechopped or precooked,” says Mitchell. “They have the kitchens and the knives to prepare fresh foods, but they don’t necessarily have the labor or the ovens.”

Click here for the entire article! Also featuring Highlandtown Healthy Living Center, Maryland Pesticide Network and Beyond Pesticides.

Health Care Change Agents Recognized in Environmental Conference

For Immediate Release: November 10, 2011

Contact:  Molly Englund

410-706-6832 (office)

443-803-4854 (cell)

Englund@son.umaryland.edu

Several Maryland hospitals and individual nurses were honored for their environmental health achievements at the Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment’s (MD H2E) annual Environmental Excellence in Health Care Conference today.

The first annual Nursing Leadership in Environmental Health Award was presented to Denise Choiniere, MS, RN, sustainability manager for University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC). Choiniere, the first full-time sustainability manager in a Maryland hospital, spearheaded a number of environmental initiatives at UMMC, including a hazardous pharmaceutical waste management program, Earth Day events, and a weekly farmers’ market.

MD H2E Director Barbara Sattler, DrPH, RN, FAAN, was honored with an Environmental Health Visionary Award. Sattler is founder and director of the University of Maryland School of Nursing’s Environmental Health Education Center and an associate professor in the School’s Community/Public Health master’s specialty.

Carmela Coyle, president and CEO of the Maryland Hospital Association, presented five Maryland hospitals with MD H2E Trailblazer Awards. The Trailblazer Award is given annually to hospitals that have shown leadership in advancing sustainability in their operations. The 2011 winners are:

Anne Arundel Medical Center (AAMC) – AAMC replaced operating room surgical lights with LED lights and started a program to move from disposable single use medical devices to reprocessed and remanufactured devices. They also implemented a surgical services recycling program and took additional steps to reduce the amount of operating room waste.

Carroll Hospital Center (CHC) –Using a sustainability tracking tool to quantify the results of an environmental initiative, CHC was able to track its water, energy, and natural gas usage. As a result, CHC took steps that reduced natural gas usage by 30 percent. These steps included boiler refurbishing, boiler parameter control charts, adjustment of pressure and water temperatures, and softening all domestic water within the hospital, which improved heat transfer through coils.

Good Samaritan Hospital – Good Samaritan Hospital built an employee/community vegetable and herb garden on its campus. Volunteers planted a variety of crops and donated a portion of the food to a local food bank. The goal of the garden project is to teach employees about healthy food options, creating their own gardens, and sharing the harvest with the community. Good Samaritan is one of two Baltimore hospitals with vegetable gardens.

Union Hospital of Cecil County (UHCC) – Union Hospital is committed to purchasing local sustainable meat, poultry, and produce for its cafeteria and patient meals. Local farms have increased their acreage for produce, employed winter greenhouses for growing, and increased poultry flock size to meet the hospital’s needs. Forty-nine percent of UHCC’s meat and 100 percent of its beef is now purchased locally. Food waste is either composted or sent to an area hog farmer to be used for feed.

University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) – UMMC focused on lighting conservation and upgrades in the past year. The goals of their project included turning off lights when not in use and when daylight is sufficient in atriums and hallways, replace inefficient light bulbs with more efficient bulbs, and establish a baseline to monitor changes. Occupancy sensors and photo cell sensors were installed and lights in mechanical rooms were placed on automated controls.

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Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment is a technical assistance and networking initiative that promotes environmental sustainability in health care. Participants include hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, research laboratories, and other ancillary health care providers in Maryland (http://mdh2e.org).

Maryland Health Care Sustainability Leadership Council Elects Top Officers

For Immediate Release: November 10, 2011

Contact:  Molly Englund

410-706-6832 (office)

443-803-4854 (cell)

englund@son.umaryland.edu

Baltimore, MD –Maryland Health Care Sustainability Leadership Council (HCSLC) elected officials from Johns Hopkins Hospital and LifeBridge Health to lead a new, broad-based effort to make health care more environmentally friendly.

Colleen Cusick, director of materials management, Johns Hopkins Hospital, was elected chair and Lionel Weeks, vice president of facilities, LifeBridge Health, was elected vice chair of HCSLC, which was established this year to provide guidance and advice to hospital leaders who want to reduce waste while increasing fresh local foods-a global effort known as “sustainability.” It is the first association of its kind in the nation.

HCSLC is comprised of health care providers who want to lead the development of environmental and sustainability health efforts in Maryland through forward thinking, piloting of new ideas, modeling behaviors, and setting examples for others to follow. The pioneering work of HCSLC will include providing guidance and advice to sustainability professionals working in Maryland, charting the course for collaborative statewide sustainability efforts, and offering insights to creating a more vigorous marketplace.

Seventy-five percent of Maryland’s hospitals have “green teams,” staff committees who are dedicated to reducing the environmental impact of their workplace. A desire among many of these health care employees to work collaboratively facilitated the creation of HCSLC. Fourteen hospitals sent representatives to HCSLC’s inaugural meeting; 40 were participating by the third.

Her involvement with the green movement at Johns Hopkins Hospital (as co-founder and chair of their green team) and with Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment, an initiative housed at University of Maryland School of Nursing, has readied Colleen Cusick to lead HCSLC in developing and implementing more sustainable practices at Maryland’s hospitals. “The HCSLC is an incredible opportunity to forge a realistic path for hospitals,” says Cusick. “I am fully committed to the HCSLC and what it can achieve with the assistance of all the members.”

Lionel Weeks has been involved with the greening and sustainability efforts of LifeBridge Health for the past four years. “As part of the HCSLC leadership team, I will be well situated to help guide Maryland health care facilities,” he says. “I believe we need to start by finding the pulse of each individual facility to see what their strengths are and what areas of growth currently exist.”

The election results were announced at the fourth annual MD H2E conference, held at the University of Maryland School of Nursing on Nov. 10. The conference brings together executives, nurses, facilities and food managers, all with the collective purpose of making health care an environmentally friendly sector.

To participate in HCSLC, please contact Colleen Cusick at ccusick@jhmi.edu.

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Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (MD H2E) is a grant-funded technical assistance and networking initiative that promotes sustainability in health care. Participants include hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, research laboratories, and other ancillary health care providers in Maryland (http://mdh2e.org).

Click here to register:

http://nursing.umaryland.edu/events/environmental/2011/index.php

Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment
and the University of Maryland School of Nursing present:

Environmental Excellence in Health Care:
Measuring Success

Thursday, November 10, 2011

7:30 a.m. – 4:15 p.m.

Join regional and national health care professionals, environmental industry experts, and educators for this learning and networking event designed to showcase the measurement practices of hospitals as they journey toward more sustainable environments for hospital staff, patients, and communities. The keynote speaker, plenary session, and smaller breakout sessions will explore how facilities are measuring sustainability success using quantitative and qualitative measures. Areas of measurement may include building design and construction, carbon footprint reductions, chemical usage reductions, community benefits, cost savings, employee engagement and/or satisfaction, patient exposure reductions, sustainable food practices, waste reduction, and water conservation.

Location

University of Maryland School of Nursing

655 W. Lombard Street

Baltimore, MD 21201