Reducing the carbon footprint of hospital-based care

Abstract

Climate change, driven by man-made greenhouse gas emissions, is a major threat to the health of this and future generations. Hospital-based healthcare generates large quantities of greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing the carbon footprint of healthcare requires direct action to reduce waste and energy use, but also requires radical reform of care pathways so that the only patients who come to or stay in hospital are people whose healthcare cannot safely be delivered closer to home. Achieving these reforms without major structural changes to the financial flows in the NHS will be extraordinarily difficult.