How Green is Your Facility? Using the Green Guide for Health Care for Tracking Environmental Improvement Strategies

The 2008 Revised Green Guide for Health Care Operations Section is anticipated for release in July 2008. This webinar gives the highlights of this tool, which is focused on continuous environmental quality improvement in the health care setting. Case studies from health care facilities across the country will target key strategies within the context of the GGHC framework.

Learning Objectives:

• Effectively use the Green Guide for Health Care for continuous environmental quality improvement.
• Recognize that the Green Guide is not just for those undergoing new construction but helpful in identifying and tracking ongoing greening strategies.
• Identify key strategies for improving environmental quality in health care facilities operations.

Presenters and Panelists:

Lorissa MacAllister
Healthcare Studio Leader
Progressive AE

Lorissa is the Healthcare Studio Leader at Progressive AE. She has expertise in healthcare master planning, designing, programming, and sustainable healthcare design. She approaches the design and programming of a facility through process-based planning. Lorissa is working locally on developing quality measures in physician practices with the Alliance for Health with the support of a Robert Wood Johnson foundation grant. In 2007, Lorissa was recognized as one of Forty Under 40 Business Leaders in West Michigan. Lorissa is on the Gilda's Club of Grand Rapids' Board of Directors, the Keller Foundation Vice President, and was on the Cascade Charter Township Planning Commission.

Janet Brown
Director, Sustainable Operations
Practice Greenhealth

Janet Brown is Director, Sustainable Operations for Practice Greenhealth, a new not-for-profit, joining together Hospitals for a Healthy Environment (H2E), The Green Guide for Health Care and the Health Care Clean Energy Exchange. Janet leads environmental improvement activities for membership facilities.

Janet coordinates a monthly Greening Operations webinar series and is on the Steering Committee of the Green Guide for Health Care, a self-certifying tool to steer facilities through greening their design, construction, and daily operations. Janet is currently co-chairing a committee to review and update the operations section of the Green Guide for Health Care. Janet writes a column "Greening Your Practice" for Holistic Primary Care, a magazine for primary care physicians.

Janet coordinated health care environmental management programs for Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City from 1991 - 2004. Beth Israel received numerous awards including the EPA's Environmental Quality Award in 2001. Janet lives in Amherst, MA with her husband and two children.

Continuing Education:

• This program meets the requirements for CHSP Continuing Education Credits.