A Healthy Future for Healthcare Building
Posted on January 9, 2010
How green building can make medical facilities more efficient, healthy, and profitable
By: Scott H. Lawson M.S., President and Certified Industrial Hygienist
No one understands the importance of making healthy choices more than medical services professionals. So, it should come as no surprise that the medical industry is increasingly taking advantage of recent advances made in green building. The phrase “green building” can mean a lot of different things, but everyone agrees on some basic principals. A definition from the California Environmental Protection Agency lays out these basics by pointing out that green facilities “are designed to meet certain objectives such as protecting occupant health; improving employee productivity; using energy, water, and other resources more efficiently; and reducing the overall impact to the environment.”
Why go green? A number of reasons have been cited. Professors Andrew Jameton and Jessica Pierce persuasively argue that medical professionals have an ethical responsibility to reduce the impact of healthcare on our shared environment. They cite a 1996 Institute of Medicine study by L.C. Chen that demonstrates that “about 25% of health problems are environmental in origin.” In their 2001 article in the Canadian Medical Journal entitled “Environment and health: Sustainable health care and emerging ethical responsibilities,” Jameton and Pierce conclude that the ethical need to “go green” in healthcare is driven by three considerations.
“First, today’s generations have responsibilities for the welfare of future generations…healthcare should accept a responsibility to meet current needs in ways modest and clean enough to be sustainable for centuries. Second, humans have a responsibility toward the natural world for the sake of both nature and ourselves…Third, because about 80% of the world’s wealth benefits only 20% of its people, the vast majority have very little. Poverty is one of the main factors contributing to poor health, and it reduces the ability of populations to cope with environmental decline.”
In addition to the ethical case for environmental building, green building practices also contribute to a healthier staff and, consequently, an improved bottom line. Healthier workspaces can reduce environment-related illnesses by applying a number of commonly-used green building methods, including increased ventilation, reduced air recirculation, improved filtration, ultraviolet disinfection of air, reduced office sharing, and reduced occupant density. According to a 2000 study by William J. Fisk of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, such improvements significantly lower the occurrence of four of the most common respiratory illnesses which account for 176 million days of lost work at a cost of $70 billion a year, due to the cost of treatment and lost work. Such improvements in building design can also create a 9-20% reduction in cases of the common cold, translating into 16-37 million fewer cases annually. This annual reduction could save US businesses as much as $14 billion each year. Further, improved health generally increases worker and occupant progress and productivity, which ultimately stimulates a company’s bottom line. Fisk estimates that companies could save a combined $160 billion a year by improving indoor air quality regulations and standards.
The effect of green building on employee health is not the only advantage for medical services facilities. Patient recovery time can also be reduced by an improved indoor environment. According to a survey of senior healthcare administrators conducted in January and February of 2007 by Turner Construction Company, The U.S. Green Building Council, and McGraw-Hill Construction, 47% of adminstrators reported reduced patient recovery time due to green building practices.
According to a 1998 study published by California’s Center for Health Design, there are three primary ways in which the environment can influence a patient’s outcome. First of these is the impact on medical care. An environment can help or hinder the actions of caregivers. Secondly, the health status of the patients’ can be strengthened or impaired by existing conditions. Thirdly, environments can either protect patients or expose them to illnesses. For example, the circulation of ultra-clean air can prevent nosocomial infections (i.e. infections which are a result of treatment in a hospital or a healthcare service unit.) This study also cites architect Derek Parker of Anshen + Allen in San Francisco. He has estimated the cost savings from better buildings with shorter stays, drug savings, and labor costs at $10 million a year for a 300-bed hospital.
The Center for Health Design has also identified significant savings in personnel costs. Green design can act as a magnet for qualified staff. When a leading ‘green facility’ in the upper Midwest, Woodwinds Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., recruited for 400 new positions, 3,800 resumes poured in – nearly ten times the number of staff they needed. Results like this mean that staffing costs could help pay for the increased costs of building green.
Green buildings can also reduce energy costs significantly. According to a study authored by Gregory H. Kats, the Director of Financing for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy, green buildings reduce energy consumption by 25-30% on average. Businesses in the US spend $107,897,000,000 annually on energy for their facilities, according to the US Department of Energy. A 30% cut in this cost would represent $32,369,100,000 annually in bottom line savings for businesses in every region and sector of the country, including energy-intensive operations like hospitals and other medical facilities. Healthcare, which represents 14% of US GDP, could see large returns sector-wide.
In order to measure the value of green buildings, however, it is also necessary to consider the cost of building green, as compared to traditional building practices. There is a widespread misconception that green building is significantly more expensive than conventional building methods. While building green may come at a higher initial cost than traditional building methods, green investments are easily regained over time. In Sustainable Building Technical Manual: Green Building Design, Construction, and Operation, author David Gottfried estimates that the initial construction of green buildings typically accounts for only 2% of the total cost, with operations and maintenance accounting for 6%. When you consider the yearly savings that result from reducing lost work time and improving employee health that result from green businesses, the benefits of green building become even more obvious.
The medical services sector has been slow to adapt green practices. According to the U.S. Green Building Council, only 74 of the 3,617 LEED-registered projects in the United States are healthcare buildings and only one certified LEED-Platinum project (the OHSU Medical Office Building in Portland, Oregon) is a healthcare facility. Why haven’t more healthcare facilities gone green? Many remain resistant to green building due to the initial increase in construction costs. However, as demonstrated above, the preliminary investment in green building is returned in the long run through the continued health and productivity of workers and reduced energy costs. In the near future, with more and more key corporations reaping the benefits of choosing to go green, healthcare providers that resist the green movement will face staunch criticism and, ultimately, risk failure. Green building has undeniably become a benchmark in industrial, residential, and commercial building, and green practices now are gradually taking their place among best practices in the healthcare field. The future of healthcare finally looks greener – and healthier – than ever before.
Scott H. Lawson M.S., author of “A Healthy Future for Healthcare Building,” is the President of The Scott Lawson Companies (www.slgl.com) located in Concord, NH. He can be reached at (603) 228-3610 or at scott@slgl.com.
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