Linking theory and practice to advance sustainable healthcare: the development of maturity model version 1.0.

Background: Climate change and increased awareness of planetary health have made reducing ecological footprints a priority for healthcare organizations. However, improving healthcare's environmental impact remains difficult. Numerous researchers argue these difficulties are caused by healthcare's environmental impact being multidimensional, influenced throughout the healthcare chain, and often has downstream consequences that are hard to identify or to measure.

Sustainability as an Intrinsic Moral Concern for Solidaristic Health Care.

Environmental pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change have adverse impacts on global health. Somewhat paradoxically, health care systems that aim to prevent and cure disease are themselves major emitters and polluters. In this paper we develop a justification for the claim that solidaristic health care systems should include sustainability as one of the criteria for determining which health interventions are made available or reimbursed - and which not.

[Medication waste in a hospital setting: concerns and considerations].

The use of medication contributes significantly to the total CO2 emission caused by the public health sector. Conservative estimates reveal that the amount of medication distributed by public pharmacies but is wasted unused equalizes a total amount of 100 million euro. Data regarding medication waste in hospitals is not yet available.

Turning green: the impact of changing to more eco-friendly respiratory healthcare - a carbon and cost analysis of Dutch prescription data.

Objectives: Dry powder inhalers (DPIs) and soft mist inhalers have a substantially lower global warming potential than pressurised metered-dose inhalers (pMDIs). To help mitigate climate change, we assessed the potential emission reduction in CO equivalents when replacing pMDIs by non-propellant inhalers (NPIs) in Dutch respiratory healthcare and estimated the associated cost.

Design: We performed a descriptive analysis of prescription data from two national databases of two independent governmental bodies.