Green Coalition pilots environmental scorecard for long-term care and retirement homes

By Kent Waddington and Linda Varangu

Through collaboration with long-term care (LTC) and retirement home (RH) partners and with funding support from Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), the Canadian Coalition of Green Health Care has developed a comprehensive made-in-Canada environmental benchmarking tool designed specifically for the LTC/RH sector. Stakeholders are now invited to take part in piloting this FREE first-of-itskind benchmarking tool.

The tool will help LTC and RHs identify, measure and report on their environmental performance; helping enable sector-wide benchmarking of energy use, water use and waste management, pollution prevention, corporate leadership, food, transportation and climate change, that can be used by senior leaders to improve decision-making to advance sustainability and environmental performance. Hospital corporations or health authorities who are aligned with LTC may find this scorecard useful to address sustainability issues in LTC facilities

Assembling these metrics will be supported by a new web-based tool (online tool) to assist LTC/RH users in collecting the Scorecard data. The online tool will facilitate data tracking and monitoring for the sector and will be used to populate a participants confidential and unique web-based dashboard. Some LTC/RHs have already begun reporting on their environmental and sustainability initiatives through an online questionnaire created by the Coalition.

The pilot LTC/RH scorecard continues the Coalition’s focus on helping Canada’s health care organisations measure their environmental performance, improve their climate change resiliency and lower their ecological footprint. Why Participate? Ultimately, your participation will provide the LTC/RH sector with important information and insights about overall environmental performance and energy consumption. As well as:

• Help measure your internal environmental performance to improve your sustainability initiatives;

• Help reduce your energy and greenhouse gas emissions using Canada’s first environmental evaluation tool for the LTC/RH sectors;

• Provide you and senior leaders with important information to help guide budgeting and planning, highlight anomalies (i.e., fuel consumption, waste management fees, etc.) and assist in more informed decision-making;

• Identify potential areas for improvement to environmental performance and operational efficiency unique to your organisation; and

• Receive a high-level snapshot of your organisation’s environmental performance against a backdrop of de-identified peer data

It may also position participants to better pursue funding support programs such as IESO’s Save on Energy program in Ontario.

To participate, email the Coalition’s Project Coordinator, Autumn Sypus, autumn@greenhealthcare.ca and she will set you up with you own unique and confidential survey link so you can start submitting your 2021 data before May 10th, 2023. The Coalition will be happy to organise a Zoom meeting to provide you with step-by-step instruction if required.

The Coalition also recently released a new FREE downloadable guidebook highlighting key steps and actions senior leaders can initiate and support for their organisation to move them towards a climate-resilient, carbon net-zero, and environmentally-sustainable health system. Intended as a primer to help the LTC/RH sector transition to a greener system, the document is an excellent source of inspiration for those starting their journey.

Download Environmental Stewardship: An implementation guide for boards, management, and clinical staff – Meeting Long Term Care Standards and beyond at: https://greenhealthcare.ca/guidebooks/

To learn more about IESO’s Save on Energy program, please visit: https:// www.saveonenergy.ca/For-Your-SmallBusiness/Programs-and-Incentives

The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care is Canada’s premier green health care resource network and is leading the evolution of sustainability in Canada’s health sector as a national voice and catalyst for environmental change. Our vision is a resilient, sustainable and low-carbon health system. https://greenhealthcare.ca. n H