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.

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)

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).

Welcome to the MDH2E September 2011 News Roundup – Toxics Special Edition!

This special issue is a

primer on some of the toxic chemicals we come in contact with every day in health care – and what to do about it. Chemicals that may pose risks to human health and the environment are utilized in everything from cleaning products to IV bags, warranting a closer look.

In this News Roundup, find articles on:

• · Environmentally Preferable Purchasing
• · Handling Hazardous Drugs
• · Green Cleaners
• · Chemotherapy Exposure
• · DEHP
• · Antibacterial Soap
• · Sterilants and Disinfectants
• · Vinyl, VOCs & Formaldehyde
• · Integrated Pest Management
• · Organic Produce
• · And MUCH more!

We hope you enjoy. We look forward to hearing the latest green news about your facility, so please, drop us a line with an update!

Created by Casey Starshine, with support from MD H2E, ANHE, and University of Maryland School of Nursing,  this video takes a look at nursing and sustainable food in healthcare. Casey Starshine is a part-time hospice RN and a part-time nursing instructor at Anne Arundel Community College and Community College of Catonsville. She just earned her Masters of Science degree from the University of Maryland School of Nursing.

MD H2E’s own Dr. Barbara Sattler is interviewed!

Click here to watch:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFuOXAsyLe0