Sustainable healthcare

At Bupa, it describes a system that meets the health needs of the present, without compromising the health of future generations.

Sustainable healthcare is about understanding that our health – and that of our environment around us – are intrinsically linked, and acting in a way that supports both people and planet health.

In practice, sustainable healthcare is underpinned by three core principles:

1. Sustainable prevention

Keeping people as healthy as possible for as long as possible – and empowering them to take an active role in their health and wellbeing – reduces the risk of them becoming unwell or needing to receive treatment and consume healthcare resources in the first place.

Focusing on primary prevention (health and lifestyle), secondary prevention (screening to identify disease in its earliest stage) and tertiary prevention (reducing the effects of established disease) can deliver both near-term and long-term sustainability benefits through lower healthcare consumption.

2. Sustainable pathways

When access to healthcare services is required, simplifying access routes and catching diseases in their earliest stages are often associated with less resource-intensive treatment.

By getting people to the right service at the right time and making healthcare pathways more efficient and joined-up (for example, by implementing initiatives such as digital triage and "one-stop" diagnostic clinics) you can reduce healthcare’s environmental footprint through reductions in patient travel and removing the unnecessary or duplicated tests that are often found in fragmented healthcare systems.

3. Sustainable practice

When care or treatment is being delivered to patients it is vital that the carbon footprint and wider environmental impacts of are kept to a minimum. This can be achieved by minimising the emissions or resources required to deliver high quality health outcomes, for example, reducing waste associated with procedures, using more sustainable products/materials or reusing equipment where clinically appropriate.

Minimising the environmental impact of care must not compromise the health outcomes or quality of care, so it is important for organisations and healthcare professionals to collect data that can demonstrate both the clinical effectiveness and environmental impacts of practice.

Why is sustainable healthcare important?

Failure to transition to a model of sustainable healthcare will only serve to increase the environmental impact of the healthcare sector. Population growth, unhealthy lifestyles, increases in chronic disease, ageing populations and increased access to healthcare are all expected to drive increases in healthcare demands and resource consumption in the coming decades.

When this is combined with the anticipated healthcare impacts linked to climate change, the need for sustainable transformation becomes clearer and more urgent.

Climate change is rapidly impacting our planet and the environment we rely on, through rising temperatures, extreme weather events such as wildfires, and the intensification of air pollution1
A healthy environment contributes so much to our health and wellbeing – the air that we breathe, the food that we eat, the places we live – that any negative impact on the environment as a result of climate change risks damaging our health.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says climate change is the "single biggest health threat facing humanity". According to the WHO the unfolding climate crisis "threatens the essential ingredients of good health and has the potential to undermine decades of progress in global health". It estimates that between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths every year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone.

Find out more about the health impacts on people and who will be most at risk.

Healthcare professionals are some of the most trusted and respected members of society and are perfectly placed to inspire and demand the changes we need for a healthier planet and healthier people.

The health impacts of climate change are already being seen and treated first-hand by healthcare professionals, so it will be unsurprising to hear that many of them care deeply about this matter. A recent survey of 150 doctors and nurses across Europe by Economist Impact reported that nearly 80% wanted to see sustainability as a measurable domain in the quality of care that hospitals deliver. Only 12% of respondents said that they did not have the time or resources to be involved.

Learn more about how healthcare professionals can support sustainability or advocate for action at the intersection of people and planet health.