How Can Healthcare Facilities Use Efficiency to Drive Climate and Health Goals?

Healthcare Facilities Today spoke with Keith Edgerton, director of climate solutions at Health Care Without Harm & Practice Greenhealth, about how the checklist supports hospitals in turning their sustainability commitments into measurable results.

HFT: What are some of the “quick wins” healthcare facilities can achieve using the checklist, and what longer-term projects does it help guide?  

Keith Edgerton: General cleaning and preventive maintenance (PM) should already be part of every facility’s plan. Most hospitals have annual PM schedules where technicians handle tasks like cleaning filters and coils to keep systems efficient. The checklist simply reinforces those habits.

One often-overlooked step is using an infrared scanner to spot heat loss or poor insulation around pipes and walls. Small leaks can waste a surprising amount of energy, and adding this step to your regular maintenance can uncover savings without extra work.

Lighting upgrades are another easy win. Lighting makes up about 20 percent of a hospital’s energy use, so switching to LEDs delivers quick payback. Staff also notice the difference — brighter, safer spaces, especially in stairwells, can boost morale and safety along with savings.

That’s an important part of sustainability: it’s not just about reducing costs but improving the work environment. People support changes more when they see benefits to their day-to-day experience.

A major opportunity lies in managing air temperatures. Hospitals often heat and cool air simultaneously – heating outside air to 70 degrees, then cooling it back down in some spaces. A quarterly HVAC setpoint review helps avoid that. Adjust discharge temperatures each season based on outdoor conditions. Many facilities leave their setpoints the same year-round, missing easy efficiency gains.

Similarly, use holiday or unoccupied space protocols. While hospitals operate 24/7, offices, admin wings and clinics sit empty at night or on weekends. Reducing airflow or shutting off systems in those areas saves money without affecting patient care.

Most of these actions don’t require new equipment — just smarter management of what’s already there.

Water use is another area with big potential. At one hospital I worked with, we cut water consumption in half – from 64 million gallons to 32 million – in five years. We upgraded fixtures, optimized irrigation and replaced overwatered landscaping with drought-tolerant plants. Smart sensors stopped irrigation when it rained or soil moisture was high, and we found leaks we didn’t know existed.

We also installed a deduct meter for irrigation water. Many cities charge sewer treatment fees on all water, even irrigation, which never enters the sewer system. Installing that meter ensured we only paid for actual usage, which is a major cost reduction. Water conservation is often the easiest place to start. If a facility hasn’t addressed it recently, there’s almost always low-hanging fruit with fast, measurable results.

HFT: How does the checklist align with broader sustainability goals or programs such as Energy Star or LEED for Healthcare?  

Edgerton: Energy Star tracks energy use in buildings and provides scores (one to 100). Organizations can be recognized for their energy reduction achievements through the program, and Energy Star also offers resources to support reducing energy. If an organization uses our checklist, they’ll reduce their energy use, therefore boosting their Energy Star score, which could earn them an award from Energy Star. LEED is a set of sustainability standards (which includes water and energy efficiency design standards) for buildings.

If you have a LEED-certified building, then it’s built to run efficiently. Just because a building was built to run efficiently, that doesn’t mean the owners will actually ensure the building runs efficiently. Our checklist could be used to audit the building to verify that the LEED designed and built building is in fact running efficiently and in some cases our checklist could make a LEED certified build run more efficiently than originally designed.

HFT: What kinds of results or benchmarks have early adopters of the checklist reported so far? 

Edgerton: Our checklist was released this past July and we will be offering working groups to our Practice Greenhealth partners to join and share their energy reduction accomplishments from using the checklist while also offering education to the partners on how to implement some of the items listed on the checklist.

At this time we haven’t collected data from Practice Greenhealth partners in relation to them using the checklist, but we’re looking forward to collecting success stories (including total energy and water reduction metrics) from the use of the checklist and supporting our partners on the use of the checklist in the coming year.

Jeff Wardon, Jr., is the assistant editor of the facilities market.