UVM Medical Center and Off-Campus Clinics Honored for Green Facilities and Climate-Friendly Initiatives

Burlington, Hinesburg, St. Albans, Essex Vt. – From constructing and operating green facilities and sustainably sourcing meat and poultry products, to innovative clinical initiatives that reduce environmental impacts, University of Vermont Medical Center has once again been honored for leadership on environmental sustainability in health care. 

As communities across central Vermont grapple with the impacts of flash flooding that occurred on the one-year anniversary of last year’s devastating storms, UVM Medical Center leaders who have spent years finding wants to integrate environmental sustainability concepts into health care planning and operations say the destruction is a visceral reminder of the importance of climate initiatives.

“Every day I feel the urgency of addressing climate change,” said Diane Imrie, Interim Network Director of Sustainability at UVM Medical Center. “We have an opportunity to reduce our impact on the environment, use our resources responsibly, and be a good community partner in this work. We are focused on finding new solutions to decrease the carbon footprint of health care delivery and are making positive change.”

Practice Greenhealth Awards & Circles of Excellence

UVM Medical Center received several stand-alone awards from Practice Greenhealth, which highlighted environmentally-friendly projects and initiatives at the hospital and celebrated its commitment to leadership on environmental sustainability in health care.

Those awards include the Greenhealth Emerald Award, which goes to the top 20 percent of participating hospitals and recognizes organizations for advanced sustainability programs and outstanding performance across a range of categories relating to environmental impacts. The award recognizes UVM Medical Center’s commitment to improving environmental sustainability, and to building the concepts into its operations and organizational culture.

UVM Medical Center also earned the organization’s ‘Greening the OR’ award, which recognizes hospitals that have made significant improvements to environmental performance in the operating room. The hospital’s work re-imagining how to provide nitrous oxide in operating rooms – discontinuing the use of a de-centralized distribution system and moving to a canister-based method at the bedside – reduced greenhouse gas emissions by eliminating leaks. It also provided the foundation for ongoing work to redesign carbon dioxide canisters in partnership with manufacturers, with the goal of reducing emissions there as well.

UVM Medical Center was also recognized for exemplary performance in specific areas of environmental sustainability –earning a spot in Practice Greenhealth’s Circles of Excellence for Food, Water and Green Building. These awards honor the 10 highest-performing hospitals nationwide in each area of sustainability, based on multiple years of reporting and benchmarking.

The hospital’s work improving monitoring of its water use – a system that allows its facilities team to track usage rates month-to-month, pinpoint leaks and determine if there are other opportunities for conservation, earned it a spot in that Circle of Excellence.

UVM Medical Center’s Essex Primary Care building, which also recently received LEED certification and earned an award from the Vermont Green Building Network’s ‘Vermont’s Greenest Building Awards Competition’, earned the hospital a spot in the Circle of Excellence for Building for highly-efficient design and environmentally-friendly operations. 

The hospital, which is a perennial recipient of honors for its innovative food sourcing programs, also earned a spot in the Circle of Excellence for Food, honoring its work on the Bloomtrain project. UVM Medical Center partners with about a dozen Vermont farms to participate in the effort, which is a regional campaign focused on healing the land and caring for local pollinator populations.

“This is essential work,” said Imrie of Bloomtrain. “Building topsoil, maintaining clean water and taking steps to prevent runoff damage – it is critical to the future health of communities across our region.”

‘Energy to Care’ Awards

In addition to Practice Greenhealth, LEED and Vermont Green Building Network, UVM Medical Center’s Hinesburg Family Health practice and its St. Albans Dialysis clinic also recently received awards from the American Society for Health Care Engineering.

The organization’s Energy to Care Award honors health care organizations that go above and beyond to achieve sustainability benchmarks related to energy and water consumption The facilities were honored for reducing energy consumption by at least 10 percent over a one-year period.

UVM Medical Center is one of 102 facilities nationwide to receive the award this year.