A practical guide to decarbonising the total hip replacement pathway

This guide marks further progress in the journey towards designing and delivering high quality low carbon health systems. Delivering environmentally sustainable models of clinical care is an essential priority to complement wider efforts by Greener NHS to decarbonise the NHS. Taking an analytical approach to common conditions that use substantial healthcare resource is likely to yield many opportunities to reduce our environmental footprint, and this is exactly what we have found by applying the GIRFT ELLA approach to the hip replacement pathway.

For this guide, we have used a data-driven approach to understand where the most impactful changes can be made to reduce carbon emissions across the hip replacement pathway. In keeping with the principles of sustainable research and quality improvement, we have used and adapted pre-existing published carbon footprint estimates for healthcare activities, supplementing this with further modelling where data gaps existed. Alongside improving environmental sustainability, the recommendations in this guide present clear potential cobenefits in relation to improving patient outcomes and experience, while using the NHS’s finite financial resource more efficiently.

As always, this GIRFT initiative has benefited from expert input from a range of collaborators spanning primary to tertiary care and representing different national organisations. It has also benefited from the involvement of patients, who have provided valuable insights and shaped the recommendations.

GIRFT will continue to develop guidance that advances knowledge about delivering environmentally sustainable healthcare which maintains and improves on the broader fundamentals of high-quality healthcare.

This workstream benefits from the support of UKRI and NIHR funding through the Sustainable Health Systems Hub based at the University of Exeter. This support, coupled with engagement and dialogue from across the NHS, will help us to understand how to further improve the ELLA methodology and accelerate our sustainable transition.