Lessons from patient safety to accelerate healthcare decarbonization

Climate change and environmental degradation are increasingly impacting human health, with more frequent heatwaves, wildfires, extreme weather events, emerging infectious diseases, increased respiratory, cardiovascular, and mental health conditions, and food and water insecurity.1 Current projections of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions suggest it will be harder to limit warming below the critical threshold of 2°C to avoid the worst predicted harms unless deep and immediate reductions in GHGs occur in all sectors of society. The healthcare sector contributes approximately 4.6% of total global GHGs and 4 million disability-adjusted life years lost from air pollution annually.1 Health care must do its part to mitigate environmental degradation and pollution and avoid excessive resource consumption.2, 3

One-fifth of global healthcare GHG contributions come from the US healthcare sector despite the United States comprising only 4% of the global population. A number of motivated US healthcare delivery organizations (HCOs) have begun to implement decarbonization initiatives, and these efforts should be applauded.4, 5 However, many of these initiatives are not grounded in rigorous measurement and data transparency, making it difficult to judge the veracity of claims or progress consistent with science-based targets.6 The nascent state of healthcare sustainability is reminiscent of the early days of the patient safety movement and is experiencing similar growing pains. In 1999, the report “To Err is Human” raised the alarm about patient safety, but demonstrable improvement was slow going and hampered by, among other things, a lack of data and transparency required for guiding and tracking evidence-based performance improvement.7 Progress has been made since then primarily through regulatory and payment reforms, and in 2025, the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is expected to implement a Patient Safety Structural Measure that further embeds measurement, accountability, and transparency in assessing how hospitals ensure patient safety.8 However, the urgency of the climate crisis and healthcare's significant contribution to it leaves no room for decades-long delays. To ensure progress in the absence of regulation and payment levers, HCOs should apply the principles guiding the patient safety movement to ensure that data transparency and verification are the centerpiece of the transformation to evidenced-based, environmentally sustainable health care.

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