Kaiser Permanente’s West Los Angeles Medical Center has received an environmental excellence award from Practice Greenhealth, the national membership organization for hospitals and health systems committed to environmentally responsible operations and care.
Through novel ways of reducing waste, Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles demonstrates its commitment to environmental excellence by diverting 32 percent of its waste to local landfills in 2013, marking one of the medical center’s biggest environmental accomplishments to date. Given its environmental successes, the goal for 2015 is to divert 40 percent of the medical center’s waste, 30 percent of which comes from the medical center’s Operating Room (OR). Prime examples of waste include blue wrap (material designed to wrap surgical instruments prior to sterilization); saline bottles; plastics and cardboard.
“This award demonstrates that we are doing our best to reduce our impact on the environment. Our patients see the obvious ways we take care of their health – through doctor appointments and preventative screenings – but offering a healthy environment also plays a big role in their health in ways they can’t always see,” Karina Maher, M.D., a pediatrician and co-chair of the Green Team at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles, said.
Kaiser Permanente, as an organization, is a health care leader in purchasing safer materials, sourcing sustainable food and eliminating toxins such as DEHP and PVC from many of its medical supplies. Additionally, the organization recently announced it will stop buying flame-retardant furniture that is treated with chemicals that have been linked to cancer, reproductive disorders and brain damage in children, among other ills.
“There are so many opportunities to recycle and reuse items that we traditionally had discarded after one use,” director of Environmental Health and Safety at Kaiser Permanente, West Los Angeles and co-chair of the Green Team Kathy Murrell said. “We launder our gowns rather than buy disposable ones and we now reuse the blue wrap which transports sterile medical instruments. These efforts have made a huge impact on reducing the waste we send to our landfills.”
Several Kaiser Permanente facilities have received awards every year since the inception of Practice Greenhealth’s Environmental Excellence Awards program in 2002. In all, Kaiser Permanente has won 203 awards from Practice Greenhealth in the last 12 years.
“We are proud to partner with Kaiser Permanente in its commitment to protecting the health of the environment and the communities it serves,” President and Founder of Practice Greenhealth and Health Care Without Harm Gary Cohen said. “The organization has worked consistently to support sustainable practices in health care and these awards recognize its outstanding achievements.”
The Practice Greenhealth Environmental Excellence Awards were presented last month in Cleveland at the annual CleanMed conference, the premier national environmental gathering for leaders in health care sustainability.
Kaiser Permanente is committed to helping shape the future of health care and is recognized as one of America’s leading health care providers and not-for- profit health plans. Founded in 1945 with the mission is to provide high-quality, affordable health care services and to improve the health of our members and the communities we serve, Kaiser now serves approximately 9.3 million members in eight states and the District of Columbia.
Practice Greenhealth is the nation’s leading membership and networking organization for institutions in health care that have made a commitment to sustainable, environmentally friendly practices. To learn more about Practice Greenhealth, persons interested can visit: practicegreenhealth.org.
Care for members and patients is focused on their total health and guided by their personal physicians, specialists and team of caregivers. Our expert and caring medical teams are empowered and supported by industry-leading technology advances and tools for health promotion, disease prevention, state-of-the-art care delivery and world- class chronic disease management. Kaiser Permanente is dedicated to care innovations, clinical research, health education and the support of community health. For more information, go to: kp.org/share.
