Close your eyes for a minute and think about your dream healthcare facility. What do you see? It probably depends on your perspective. If you’ve ever been a patient in a hospital, you might envision private rooms with nice views, a private bathroom and shower, or maybe fresh, organic and antibiotic-free food, a room for visiting families, better signage, cleaner spaces and more quiet. If you work in a healthcare facility, you probably have your own wish-list: more space, a place to meet with coworkers or patients, an area for quiet contemplation, exercise, a garden, healthier cafeteria and food vendor choices, bike storage and showers.

Wake up! You’re dreaming! But so what? That’s how positive changes start … by envisioning how we would like to see things. We don’t have to accept the current state of healthcare with its dismal spaces, its inefficiencies, its unhealthy food, its poorly designed work areas and its toxic wastes. We can imagine how we’d like it to be, and now, with the help of Hospitals for a Healthy Environment, the Center for Health Design, and the new Green Guide for Health Care™, we can learn about ways other clinics and facilities are implementing environmentally-conscious changes.

While there may be few facilities that encompass all the components of an ideal “healing environment”, there are many facilities that are taking steps in the right direction. Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (www.h2e-online.org) shares successes from across the nation demonstrating that a commitment to a healing environment is good business.

If you share this vision and are passionate about being involved with healthcare’s future, check out the Center for Health Design website (www.healthdesign.org). The Center is a leading research and advocacy organization of forward-thinking healthcare and design professionals who are leading the quest to improve the quality of healthcare through building architecture and design.

The Center’s stated mission is, “To transform healthcare settings including hospitals, clinics, physician offices, and nursing homes into healing environments that contribute to health and improve outcomes through the creative use of evidence-based design.”

The Center for Health Design’s Pebble Project is gathering the stories of facilities that are changing the way we think about design and construction and measuring the outcomes to support the viability of taking this direction. Read about numerous healthcare facilities that are registered in the project at http://www.healthdesign.org/research/pebble/partners.php.

How do you start developing your vision for environmentally-sound design for your clinic or healthcare facility? Begin with the Green Guide for Health Care (www.GGHC.org), a step-by-step guide that steers a facility through green design, construction and operations. The Green Guide for Health Care is here!

The Green Guide is a sustainable design toolkit integrating enhanced environmental and health principles into the planning, design, construction, operations and maintenance of facilities. The Guide is a voluntary, self-certifying toolkit that can be used by all operational management team members from designers to architects to patient caregivers and maintenance staff. The Guide is specific to the special needs and issues surrounding healthcare design, construction and operation.

Sections include but are not limited to indoor air, energy efficiency, water efficiency, views, natural lighting and toxicity reduction. The Green Guide not only supports the design and building process, it also addresses operational issues that impact the healing environment. To take one example, why spend the time, energy and money to build a beautiful “green” clinic, and then purchase mercury-containing equipment? The Green Guide helps address questions like this.

Healthcare providers have an obligation to take responsibility for the environmental and health impact of their practices. Fortunately, the shift toward a greener medical culture has numerous positive outcomes including cost savings, improved quality of care, improved safety and reduced absenteeism.

The GGHC Pilot has a forum where facilities can register their projects free of charge. The forum allows practitioners and administrators who are committed to environmental issues to exchange ideas and information with others who have registered projects and to have access to experts in the field of green building and operations.

Sponsors of the Green Guide include Hospitals for a Healthy Environment, The Merck Family Fund and The NYS Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA).

Other helpful websites include:

• Energy Star (www.energystar.gov)
• ASHE Green Health Care Construction Guidance Document (www.gghc.org/documents/ASHEGreenConstructionGuidance2002-A.pdf)
• Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-Green Building Rating System for New Construction® Version 2.1 by U.S. Green Building Council (www.usgbc.org/Leed)

Janet Brown is the Partner Coordinator for Hospitals for a Healthy Environment Program, New York, New York. Their goals are to reduce the toxicity and volume of healthcare waste and to eliminate mercury from healthcare practice. Learn more about the organization at: www.h2e-online.org.