Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is a critical part of improving the quality, safety, and equity of care. Because health plans wield enormous financial and policy influence, they are crucial to efforts to drive positive change. Health plans design policies, determine benefits and coverage, negotiate costs, and have the power to incentivize environmentally sustainable practices. Indeed, by focusing on waste reduction and energy savings, health plans can reduce operational costs, improve health outcomes, and contribute to a healthier planet.
Leveraging Health Plans for Climate Sustainability
In the 2020s, federal policies like the Federal Sustainability Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 targeted the reduction of GHG emissions specifically within the health care sector. These initiatives offer incentives for clean energy adoption that benefit both public and private health care facilities. As a result, health care organizations are discussing and implementing strategies to measure and mitigate their GHG emissions.
The health care industry faces significant risks from the physical and economic impacts of climate change, including increased costs, supply chain disruptions, and reduced access to quality care. Failure to address GHG emissions and implement innovative, decarbonized care models could have severe consequences.
Organizations committed to GHG reduction often share key characteristics: dedicated leadership support, long-term sustainability goals, a focus on public health, and the ability to track emissions. Leading organizations may utilize tools like the GHG Protocol, a global framework developed by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, to measure and manage emissions.
To drive wider adoption of these practices, health plans can change their reimbursement models to include incentives that encourage providers and organizations to invest in energy efficiency, waste reduction, and sustainable procurement while tracking their progress through established GHG accounting standards.
How Health Plans Can Contribute to Sustainability Goals
Health plans have a far-ranging reach. They provide a wide range of services, coordinate care, and have a powerful influence on costs, care management, and member behavior. This allows them to drive strategies and influence and align delivery systems toward common sustainability goals and metrics. Like health care facilities, health plans could prioritize updating their strategies to curb GHG emissions. Opportunities include:
- Financial incentives. Implementing pay-for-performance models that reward providers for reducing their carbon footprint; offering preferential reimbursement for telemedicine, sustainable supplies, or energy-efficient facilities; allowing health care facilities to reallocate funds to better support patient care.
- Coverage decisions. Adjusting coverage to favor medications or procedures with lower environmental impact through incentives or rebates, promoting more climate-conscious choices through wellness program enrollment.
- Investment strategies. Prioritizing investments in renewable energy that support health care infrastructure and communities, sustainable health care initiatives that encourage health and wellness through interaction with the environment, and divesting from fossil fuels that pollute our communities.
- Member education and outreach. Providing resources on the environmental aspects of health care choices to encourage awareness, supporting members to select providers and treatments with a smaller carbon footprint using incentives.
- Technology and interoperability. Promoting paperless processes, digitalization, and the use of telemedicine where appropriate to reduce emissions, investing in energy-efficient hospital devices to support health care demands while minimizing the environmental toll.
- Focus on primary care and preventive medicine. Emphasizing preventive health and wellness programs, by leveraging telehealth strategies, to reduce the long-term burden of chronic disease while minimizing the carbon footprint of care. This strategy will support vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by climate-related health events and those with reduced access to health resources.
- Integrating GHG reduction into quality measurement and standards. Collaborating with stakeholders to build consensus on data elements needed for the development of evidence-based metrics and standards that align with climate-related goals.
The Path Forward
This shift won’t come without hurdles. Health plans will need to invest in infrastructure to collect robust data to track the environmental performance of providers and hospitals. Partnering with environmental experts and policymakers will be crucial to setting realistic and impactful targets. They also must balance sustainability objectives with cost management and health care accessibility. Incentivizing innovation through bonus payments linked to emission reduction metrics or funding sustainability initiatives could have a substantial impact. The cost of not doing this critical work will decrease quality of care in underresourced communities and exacerbate inequities in the health of patients, the workforce, and communities.
Health plans play a pivotal role in shaping the quality of health care, and a multipronged approach will be needed to address the climate crisis. Recognizing the inextricable link between planetary health and the well-being of their patients, health plans have a responsibility to drive environmental sustainability within the system. By leveraging their influence, health plans can become catalysts for positive change, improving both the quality of care and the overall health of the planet.
