A new platform to digitally empower hospitals and healthcare leaders to drive sustainable, low-carbon, equitable and resilient healthcare has been launched by the International Hospital Federation’s (IHF) Geneva Sustainability Centre.
A partnership with Deloitte, the Sustainability Accelerator Tool (SAT) provides hospitals and healthcare organisations with a comprehensive solution to assess their sustainability maturity, track progress against key performance indicators and gain the knowledge and insights to accelerate action in environmental, social and corporate governance.
Targeting three key domains of Environment; Health, equity and wellbeing; and Leadership and governance, SAT is a cloud-based tool enables executives to report a hospital’s performance against core indicators, compare it to other healthcare organisations worldwide and make a case for funding for sustainability initiatives.
Deborah Bowen, president of the IHF, said: ‘The healthcare sector is increasingly aware that it is responsible for more than 5% of global carbon emissions. At the IHF, we recognised that healthcare leaders shared a collective will to transform the sustainability and resilience of service delivery but lacked the support to drive change.
‘The IHF established the Geneva Sustainability Centre to develop the programmes and resources to support healthcare leaders to become climate leaders. Working in collaboration with Deloitte has given us the capability to develop a cutting-edge tool that hospitals around the world can use to accelerate their actions and impact.’
Sara Siegel, global head of healthcare at Deloitte, added: ‘A catalyst for global change, the tool will help transform the way that the healthcare sector drives its sustainability agenda. By leveraging cloud technology to action-orient globally relevant sustainability KPIs, hospital and healthcare organisations worldwide can take a collective journey to decarbonize service delivery.’
The Geneva Sustainability Centre was launched in 2022 to equip hospital leaders with the information, tools and skills to drive the sector’s transition to sustainability at leadership, management and institutional levels.
The SAT is the latest addition to the Centre’s toolbox of resources developed specifically for executives in the healthcare sector. This includes the Carbon Emissions Learning Lab (CELL) simulator – a management simulation to drive greenhouse gas emissions reduction in hospitals – and free guides and case studies to equip hospital leaders with the knowledge, skills, and tools to transition to net zero healthcare delivery.
The Geneva Sustainability Centre has also developed international environmental sustainability standards for hospitals in partnership with the Joint Commission International.
Open for public consultation until 13 November 2023, the organisations invite feedback and comments on how they can enable hospitals’ sustainability strategies and assist the transition to net zero, resilient and sustainable healthcare delivery.
