Many might not realize that hospitals, in addition to helping care for countless patients and employing many workers, also have a big impact on the environment—from the amount of waste they generate to the greenhouse gas emissions produced by energy use, including heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and power for lighting and medical equipment. While not a main contributor to climate change, health care accounts for approximately 8.5 percent of U.S. domestic emissions.
Mount Sinai Health System is leading efforts to reduce the health care industry’s carbon footprint. The Health System recently received multiple Practice Greenhealth 2024 Environmental Excellence Awards, which recognize institutions that have demonstrated leadership in environmental sustainability in health care. The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai West, and Mount Sinai Beth Israel received the Greenhealth Emerald Award, putting them within the top 20 percent of hospitals leading the way in environmental stewardship.
“We’re being accountable and trying to make an effort to be more sustainable in the care that we deliver,” says Muoi Trinh, MD, Medical Director, Sustainability, Mount Sinai Health System, and Associate Professor, Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, and Cardiovascular Surgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “We care about our community and our carbon footprint and how we contribute to climate change affects our community in terms of air quality, pollution, and health.”
The Health System also received these awards from Practice Greenhealth, a leading sustainable health care organization:
- The Mount Sinai Hospital, Mount Sinai Morningside, Mount Sinai West, and the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai, received the Greening the OR Recognition Award, which recognizes hospitals that have made substantial progress to reducing the environmental impact from the operating room.
- Mount Sinai Queens, Mount Sinai Beth Israel, and Mount Sinai Brooklyn received the Partner for Change Award, which recognizes superior performance in environmental sustainability and health systems that have made substantive progress on eliminating mercury.
“The Practice Greenhealth awards are important because they allow us to compare Mount Sinai to others in the industry,” says Dr. Trinh, who leads sustainability initiatives at Mount Sinai Health System. “The awards give us metrics and tell us how we’re performing, so we know what areas we’re doing really well in and where we can improve.”
Slashing greenhouse gases in the operating room furthers Mount Sinai’s pledge to decarbonize health care, a commitment to pursuing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Health Sector Climate Pledge to reducing emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Mount Sinai has also implemented a recycling program in operating rooms as part of a broader effort to reduce plastics across the Health System.
In cities like New York, where asthma rates are high, making hospitals more sustainable means keeping both the environment, and patients, healthy, since climate change is linked to chronic respiratory and pulmonary disease, according to Dr. Trinh.
“That’s part of the reason why it’s so important that we’ve become more responsible with how we think about how we deliver care,” she says.
Muoi Trinh, MD
A cardiac anesthesiologist for more than a decade, Dr. Trinh has seen firsthand how treating patients in the operating room can increase a hospital’s carbon footprint—from discarded plastic waste containers to anesthesia gases that pollute the air. To fix the problem, she has led efforts to reduce the most harmful anesthesia gases, which can contribute a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions from operating rooms, from Mount Sinai.
“That’s part of the reason I got involved and became a huge advocate of trying to change things,” says Dr. Trinh, who has been Medical Director of Sustainability since April 2023.
Under Dr. Trinh’s leadership, Mount Sinai achieved this aim in two ways—both of which played a role in receiving the Practice Greenhealth 2024 Environmental Excellence Awards. First, the Health System removed desflurane, a greenhouse gas significantly more potent than carbon dioxide, from its inventory of anesthesia agents, and decreased the use of nitrous oxide, another anesthesia agent and potent greenhouse gas, by more than 75 percent. Second, the Health System investigated the piping system used to pump nitrous oxide into operating rooms, finding that most of this gas is lost from the bulk supply prior to reaching the anesthesia machine for clinical use. The Mount Sinai Hospital eliminated this problem at its campus by switching to smaller containers that attach directly to anesthesia machines.
“We’re hoping to continue this project over the course of this next coming year, to limit this loss all together, at all hospitals within the Mount Sinai Health System” says Dr. Trinh.
The next goal is to collect a full inventory of greenhouse gas emissions across the Health System. “Then we can prioritize our projects targeting the most significant ones first,” she says.
Dr. Trinh hopes that by receiving recognition, Mount Sinai can inspire other hospitals throughout the United States to become more sustainable. “Ultimately, the end goal is for hospitals to work collaboratively to reduce emissions from the health care industry as a whole, so we can all be part of the solution,” she says.