Jack Hughston Memorial Hospital is proof that when an organization is fueled by passion and purpose, positive interventions can ripple through a community to make impactful change.
The community-based rural hospital in Phenix City, Alabama was already known for its commitment to excellence and patient care, said Dennis Davis, the hospital’s director of quality. But Hughston Memorial was also one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gas emissions in the community. “We wanted to really reduce our footprint,” he said, noting the organization’s desire to be environmentally responsible.
As part of his role, Davis oversees the implementation and monitoring of the hospital’s quality assurance programs, ensures compliance with regulations, and promotes continuous process improvement initiatives aimed at enhancing patient safety. And while the hospital had been making progress on environmental sustainability over the past few years, Davis knew more could be done – and Â鶹´«Ã½’s Sustainable Healthcare Certification (SHC) could be a key to unlocking those solutions.
Launched in late 2023, the SHC program is available for all U.S. hospitals or critical access hospitals that have baseline emissions data for at least three greenhouse gas emission sources and an action plan on how to reduce them.
Opportunities Through Certification
Davis felt certification would not only raise awareness for the hospital’s sustainability efforts but also determine where the deficiencies were and how to address them.
To build early buy-in, the hospital tied sustainability into its employee engagement efforts. During Employee Appreciation Week, for example, staff received water bottles that could be filled at the various water stations throughout the facility instead of using single-use cups.
“It is a cultural shift of getting your staff members in the mindset of being aware of the ways and the initiatives and to brainstorm on how we can be more sustainable,” Davis said. Hughston Memorial also merged its Sustainability and Environmental Care committees to form an interdisciplinary team that had the know-how to implement process improvements across the organization. The group – which includes nursing directors, the facilities director, chief operating officer, director of materials, lab director, and the quality team – then started troubleshooting and finding alternative solutions for issues like waste reduction.
One early barrier the team faced was trying to compile the necessary resources to get started with the certification efforts – like data collection. “Some of those resources didn’t exist due to our size, how rural we are, and things that were not available in our area,” Davis said. But once they got rolling, Davis said the biggest opportunity from the certification process was getting to take a closer look at the problems, including how much construction was contributing to them. While the renovations aimed to optimize the hospital’s space and incorporate advanced sustainable technology, they also generated a significant amount of waste.
“It was very alarming how much waste we were producing with our renovation projects,” Davis said. “Finding a better way of doing that whole process was probably our biggest takeaway.” The team got to work establishing baselines of its waste disposal, pressurized metered-dose inhaler usage, and purchased electricity. “We were able to identify some of the peaks and really analyze the data to find where to put in interventions,” Davis said. “The certification process helped us identify some of the opportunities that we had that we probably wouldn't have been aware of if we had not started it.”
One approach involved collaborating with the hospital’s facility management team and construction vendors to donate discarded furniture, reuse materials in renovation projects, and recycle items that couldn’t be repurposed whenever possible. They also found ways to more efficiently use their resources, control their monitoring systems, and improve their engagement and awareness campaigns for waste reduction.
The interventions began adding up. Through 2024, Hughston Memorial saw cost savings due to:
“That is a huge savings for us,” Davis said.
A Blueprint for the Future
When it came time for the certification review, Davis admitted feeling nervous about how a virtual survey would go. But he found the process not only interactive but also easy to navigate. It also was beneficial from a learning perspective. “Throughout the process, as I was letting the surveyor know what our plan was, he also had suggestions and feedback for me,” Davis said. “That was great for us, because it helped us develop those next steps in our program. The process really aided us in developing the next blueprint for our plan.”
As for what is next, Davis said the team hopes to keep expanding its community outreach efforts by enhancing their green building practices – including utilizing more natural light in future construction projects. They also use rain barrels to capture rainwater through the hospital’s gutter system and route it to onsite flower beds. Davis said they also hope to integrate more sustainable technology into their operations. In the meantime, they are recycling all cardboard materials and want to move to using only recyclable materials in their food services department. The hospital also plans to use the cost savings it has already realized to help fund future initiatives, like paying for software that would track anesthetic gas usage in the facility to find possible reductions and efficiencies.