HOUSTON, TX — When purchasing equipment and materials, the initial cost trumps any sustainable features or life expectancy for the majority of healthcare professionals surveyed recently.

The IFMA Health Care Council and the Corporate Realty, Design and Management Institute surveyed attendees at the first five seminars in its series on energy, economics and environment as they relate to healthcare.

Seminars have been held in Phoenix, Tampa, Kansas City, Chicago and St. Louis, and the series will hit five more cities before the end of the year.

About 80 percent of attendees said that the initial cost for purchases is the dominant factor for final decisions. Chicago stood out from the rest of the cities in putting a larger focus on sustainable features (cited by 32 percent) and durability and expected life (16 percent).

One healthcare organization hoping to make big waves in healthcare purchasing is Kaiser Permanente, which earlier this year unveiled a scorecard for rating the sustainability of equipment, requiring all suppliers to provide environmental details on their products. The scorecard will be used to make purchasing decisions, and the organization said that greener choices have already saved it $20 million a year.

Going along with purchases, 70 percent of attendees said that their biggest concern with installing and buying energy saving technology is that it may not provide the expected performance.

An even larger majority (94 percent) said that greenwashing coming from manufacturers and suppliers is more widespread than two year ago.

When comparing themselves to other industries, there was some disparity among regions over how sustainable healthcare really is. More than 60 percent of Midwestern attendees said health care is as effective or better than other industries at putting sustainable measures in place. But in Phoenix and Tampa, more than 70 percent said healthcare is doing worse than others.

And the bulk of attendees - 73 percent - said that the most important step in working towards sustainability is to appoint a sustainability manager.

Recently, there have been some large-scale projects aimed at cleaning up the impacts of healthcare, such as Practice Greenhealth launching its "Greening the OR Initiative" in the hopes of sharing sustainability best practices for operating rooms, and a coalition of healthcare groups supporting the Center for Environmental Health's guidelines for environmentally preferable electronics purchasing.

For more on greening healthcare, see the first two parts of Thera Kalmijn's three-part healthcare series, "Healthcare Heal Thy Footprint" and "Pharma and Medical Supply Leaders' Rx for Greener Operations."

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