Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment

Announces Trailblazer Award Winners

For Immediate Release: November 18, 2010

Contact:  Patricia Adams

410-706-4115 (office)

410-458-9332 (cell)

padams@son.umaryland.edu

Baltimore, MD – Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (MD H2E) announced the winners of their 2010 Trailblazer Awards at their annual Environmental Excellence in Health Care Conference, held today at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. MD H2E presents the awards each year to Maryland hospitals that have shown leadership in advancing sustainability in a particular area (or areas) of their operations.  The winners represent strong models for other hospitals that are advancing sustainable health care by reducing their environmental footprint and raising the bar on achieving improved results.

The 2010 Trailblazer Award winners are:

Anne Arundel Medical Center (AMMC) – AMMC is designing and building an eight-story “green” tower that emphasizes the well-being of its patients, staff, community, and surrounding eco-system.  The green building will be the first acute care facility in Maryland to achieve the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design (LEED) silver certification. The tower will use significantly less energy and water, and fewer toxic products and building materials will be used during construction than have been used in similar structures. During the course of construction, an impressive 92.6% of waste materials were recycled.

Franklin Square Hospital Center (FSHC) – FSHC is the first Maryland hospital to develop and implement an Environmental Management System as a method for reducing environmental impacts.  Also, as part of MedStar Health, FSHC began a hazardous pharmaceutical waste management program in 2007 that, as of this year, is fully operational system-wide. Finally, while designing and building their new Patient Care Tower and Emergency Department, FSHC implemented a multitude of LEED-compliant features.

LifeBridge Health – A leader in environmental sustainability in Maryland, LifeBridge Health acquired grant funding from Baltimore Gas and Electric to replace fluorescent lights with LED lamps. Since implementing the program, LifeBridge Health staff members have served as mentors, providing assistance to staff at several other Maryland hospitals in an effort to duplicate their energy successes. LifeBridge is the only health system in the region that is composting at all of its facilities. They use the “final compost product” for landscaping needs at system facilities. Finally, LifeBridge Health has a system-wide regulated medical waste separation and reduction program that reduced red bag waste by more than 50 percent since 2002, including a fluid waste management system for operating rooms at Sinai Hospital.

University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) – In keeping with its mission to provide health care with minimum impact to human health and the environment, UMMC developed a hazardous pharmaceutical waste management program in January 2010. The policy, “The Safe Handling and Disposal of Hazardous Medications,” addresses both worker and environmental safety.  Since the program’s inception, UMMC has collected 3,510 pounds of hazardous pharmaceutical waste for proper disposal.  The policies, program, and educational materials are easily transferable to other hospitals across the state of Maryland.

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Maryland Hospitals for a Healthy Environment is a grant-funded technical assistance and networking initiative that promotes sustainability in Maryland health care. (http://www.mdh2e.org)