Making Strides in Sustainability: Health Leaders Share Lessons on Pathways to Climate Action, an interview with Wright Lassiter III, Chief Executive Officer of CommonSpirit Health

Aug 15, 2023

Aug 28, 2023 | Feature Stories

Climate change is increasingly affecting the health and well-being of people across the United States, leading to worsening health outcomes that disproportionately impact communities that have been historically marginalized. Hospitals and health systems are committed to supporting the health and well-being of the communities they serve, and there is growing recognition across the health sector about the need to address its environmental impact and reduce carbon emissions. Through facility operations, purchased energy supply chain of goods and services, and investments, the health sector produces 8.5% of U.S. carbon emissions. Health care organizations are increasingly prioritizing sustainability initiatives that reduce this environmental impact and create a more sustainable and resilient health sector, while also having significant health, social, and economic benefits.

Wright Lassiter III. Photo courtesy CommonSpirit Health

The National Academy of Medicine spoke with hospital and health system leaders about the sustainability initiatives their organizations are championing and how others in the field can take action, including concrete actions that come with up-front and long-term benefits. In this interview, Wright Lassiter III, CEO of CommonSpirit Health, discusses several concrete actions health care organizations can take now to reduce carbon emissions while doing their part to foster climate-resilient communities.

To support our ambitious goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, we developed a comprehensive Climate Action Plan that delivers on short, medium and long-term goals. This was developed with participation from across our entire system and at all levels, including our board, executive leadership and senior leaders from all of our divisions. It reflects that our commitment to the environment is an extension of Catholic social teaching. The health of the planet is critical to the work that we do, and our Climate Action Plan is essential for the sustainability of CommonSpirit Health’s business and the communities we are privileged to serve.

The plan has three core pillars: building and operations, value chain, and climate-resilient communities. The specific goals were developed across our entire system, informed by data systems that integrate energy and carbon data to enable emissions measurement, management and reporting. We also have used our financial resources to make capital investments to reduce operational emissions and position CommonSpirit as a climate action leader in the capital markets. In addition, we advocate for government and corporate policies that accelerate both CommonSpirit’s and society’s decarbonization.

Because environmental stewardship has been part of our mission for many years, we know that we already have active participation across 175,000 people and more than 2,200 care sites.

As a faith-based ministry, stewardship of our environment has been one of CommonSpirit Health’s priorities for more than two decades. In fact, the women religious who founded many of CommonSpirit’s hospitals saw that commitment to the environment is an extension of Catholic social teaching. The vulnerable communities we care so deeply about are hurt by climate change, pollution and other environmental damage more than their fair share. The Earth is our common home, and we all have a shared duty to take care of it. Climate impact is a risk multiplier to health and well-being, particularly to the most vulnerable. Promoting a healthy planet will support healthy people.

This is why health leaders especially have a duty to do all we can to protect our planet and one another. In 2022, we formally committed to the White House health care climate goals and to reach them by 2040—10 years ahead. We committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2040, one of the most aggressive targets in the health care sector. This accelerated path to meet the Paris Climate Accord requirements 10 years ahead of schedule is an extension of CommonSpirit’s decades-long work to change our own practices and move the health care industry to examine its influence on the quality of our air and water and our climate impact based on energy consumption.

We are also inspired by Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ encyclical and affirmed our commitment to the Laudato Si’ Action Platform. This initiative to change the way we think and act in relationship with one another and our fragile Earth aligns with CommonSpirit’s mission to make the healing presence of God known in our world.

All of these come together to show that a healthier future requires a healthier planet, and we recognize and accept our opportunity and our mission to lead the health care sector on climate action.

What is clear from our successes is that reducing our greenhouse gas emissions not only is good for the environment. It is good for our patients and our communities, and it is essential to our business sustainability. Operationally, we are decreasing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by improving energy efficiency at our hospitals and clinics, and by investing in renewable energy. Think about how many lights are on in a hospital. By converting to LEDs, we are not only saving energy, we are also keeping our facilities cooler and making them brighter. That means we are using less air conditioning and our physicians, nurses and other staff are more comfortable.

We’ve begun a process of retro-commissioning our hospitals, which involves evaluating, documenting, and improving the operation of the building systems. Through low- or no-cost changes to these systems, we can reduce the amount of energy we use across our organization by 5 to 8 percent.

But it’s not just changing light bulbs or installing solar power. The pandemic taught us to change the way we deliver care. From March 2020 through October 2021, we conducted more than 2 million virtual visits. We estimate that those virtual visits avoided more than 50 million miles traveled by our patients. That’s about 2.3 million gallons of gas that weren’t burned and cut the equivalent of 20,538 total metric tons of CO2 emissions. It also saved over $5.4 million in fuel costs. And, although not all care can be provided over Zoom, virtual visits now make up an important part of health care delivery and our climate action strategy.

What’s important is that we have already taken action on many of the things that were low- or no-cost and wholly within our control. That includes simple steps such as improving insulation, reducing energy leakage and changing lights to LEDs. Taking a holistic look around our facilities and auditing energy use can save 5–12% of total energy consumption. But there are obstacles – some climate action steps are costly and they take time, and a large portion of our climate impact comes from our supply chain or other sources that we do not control.

About 70% of our total emissions come from Scope 3, which are sources that are not fully controlled by us. This is why collaborating with our supply chain partners is such a high priority. Encouraging our vendors to set their own climate action targets started with our own analysis of each vendor’s emissions. We also are developing language so that our requests for proposals and contracts incorporate our climate action goals, including our collaborative approach with our supply chain partners because they are key to CommonSpirit achieving our goals.

We are working with the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), and we engaged ENGIE Impact to identify each vendor’s emissions, based on a calculation of spend and emission factors identified by commodity type. Using this calculation, we can prioritize vendors to engage based on their impact on reducing CommonSpirit’s Scope 3 emissions. Our Scope 3 indirect emissions reduction target is aligned with the net-zero Science Based Targets initiative, and we are pursuing Scope 3 emissions reduction of at least 90% by 2040. Our baseline data indicates that 33% of our top emitting vendors have already begun disclosing their emissions data to the CDP.

The health care sector is good at identifying and sharing best practices, so that’s where we can start. Collaborating across health care, our supply chain, and our communities means we can all benefit from each other’s experience and move forward in a coordinated manner. This is why we have taken leadership roles on climate action in the American Hospital Association, the Catholic Health Association, and several important coalitions:

This must happen at the local level, too, which is why we co-founded the Healthcare Anchor Network along with other health systems. This network builds on the natural leadership role of hospitals as anchor institutions in their communities and uses all of their assets—hiring, purchasing and investment—for equitable local economic impact.

Through these initiatives, we host roundtables and other discussions so that we collaborate and share ideas across the health care sector. The United States cannot meet its climate goals unless health care meets its climate goals. It is our duty to lead.

The health care sector accounts for 8.5% of U.S. emissions. We consume a lot of energy, and there is an inextricable connection between climate impact and health. The health care industry is uniquely placed to lead in climate action and advocacy to promote a healthy planet that will support healthy people. I cannot think of a more compelling set of reasons for health care organizations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, there are other reasons. Cutting emissions reduces our costs. It’s good for our patients, it’s good for our people, and it’s good for our business.

Energy producers should be working with us to find innovative solutions that keep us operating during bad weather or other catastrophic events, and they should work with us to advance policies and financial incentives that help us implement our emissions reduction measures faster.

But even on our own, every health care organization can make major changes. As I mentioned, the pandemic taught us to change the way we deliver care, and this applies to all health care organizations. The data is clear that virtual visits are both an effective way to get care to people who need it when they are unable to get to a provider in-person and a highly effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Incorporating virtual visits into our overall strategy helps us deliver care to more people, especially those who are in rural or underserved communities and the most vulnerable – and advance our climate action plan. This is something that every health care organization can do.

As described earlier, we’ve found a great deal of success with virtual visits, and they continue to be a critical part of health care delivery for us and our climate action strategy. Remember that some of the providers on the other end of these virtual visits can be working from home, too. So, they aren’t driving to work and burning up gas. There are so many benefits beyond the environmental impact, too. Virtual visits can be conducted by health care providers who may be disabled and unable to work in their normal setting. We had to adapt to virtual care because of the pandemic emergency, but it’s really shown us tremendous opportunity to address so many needs.

Wright Lassiter III is a co-author of a June 2023 article in Modern Health Care, “Embracing sustainability makes good business sense,” and portions of this interview informed the article.

Carbon Accounting 101. Learn more about the basics of carbon accounting through a recorded webinar series with related resources and real-world examples.

Key Actions to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Read a shortlist of key actions for hospitals and health systems to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.