Today, on Earth Day, we celebrate our shared responsibility to create a healthier planet — for our patients, our communities, and for future generations.
This March, we proudly earned The Joint Commission Sustainable Healthcare Certification, becoming just the third major academic medical center in the country to receive this recognition. Earning this certificate is no small feat and is thanks to a widespread effort across the medical center.
The Joint Commission (TJC) Sustainable Healthcare Certification highlights our commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and embracing innovative environmental practices that align with our vision to continue to deliver exceptional patient care while reducing operating costs, waste, and our environmental impact. Sustainability in healthcare is not only good for the planet — it's smart for our finances.
Initiatives like our partnership with Stryker help us save money while reducing waste. Through this initiative, Supply Chain works alongside our nursing team and other frontline workers to collect and reprocess single-use devices. Their efforts have saved over $700,000 and diverted more than 12,000 pounds of waste last year alone. Since 2018, those efforts have saved nearly $5 million and kept 87,000 pounds of waste out of landfills.
Our Ambulatory Pharmacy team is a group making a big impact driven by innovation. They’ve eliminated over 1.8 million printed pages each year by going digital — streamlining workflows, reducing paper waste, and improving language access for patients. New curbside recyclable cold-chain packaging at our pharmacy locations is another step toward resource stewardship.
Our volunteers at UVA Health are also making a difference. The MERCI program — Medical Equipment Recovery of Clean Inventory — rescues unused medical supplies and redistributes to those in need. This reduces landfill waste and supports nonprofits, research labs, and global health missions. It also helps protect us from contributing to the estimated billions of dollars of waste by US hospitals disposing of unused medical supplies each year.
These are just a few of the creative initiatives led across UVA Health by passionate individuals committed to sustainability!
A group that plays a big part in supporting these initiatives, policies, and organizing our submission for the TJC Sustainable Health Certification is the UVA Health Sustainability Committee. The group is led by a dedicated group of leaders, health practitioners, faculty, and students across UVA Health and UVA including co-chairs Kevin Fox, Director of Facilities Planning and Capital Development, and Dr. Matthew Meyer, Critical Care Anesthesiologist, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, and our first ever Medical Director of Sustainability.
The committee has seen a big growth in nursing participation in the past nine months after the establishment of the Sustainability Champion role as part of the Nursing Professional Governance Organization (NPGO)!
I’m so proud of how this team leads the way on sustainability. What I think I love most is seeing how saving lives, saving for the future, and saving the planet can and do work together at UVA Health.
Thank you for all you do and Happy Earth Day!
Take care and be well,
Wendy