In 2016, the Office for a Healthy Environment joined Practice Greenhealth’s market transformation working group. The group’s goal is to leverage the aggregate buying power of participating health systems in order to accelerate the transformation of the health care supply chain towards more sustainable products, technologies, and services.

We participate in both the healthier foods and healthier chemicals working groups. We are working with our supply chain and food service vendors to increase our local food purchasing, achieve a 20% reduction in meat spend and decrease our meat purchases raised with antibiotics. Additionally, we are evaluating several product categories for PVC and DEHP toxicity, and are already 100% PVC/DEHP free on products such as umbilical vessel catheters.

We convene a strategic sourcing table on a monthly basis to review the environmental attributes of procurement contracts coming through for consideration. Successes in 2016 include the purchasing of high-efficiency, ultra-low temperature freezers, packing and shipping reductions for multiple vendors and increasing energy efficiency on Med Gas contracts, ENERGYSTAR and Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) IT contracts, and kitchen recapture projects.

We are committed to leading the healthcare sector in redesigning a more sustainable future. Sustainability language is embedded into our requested proposals, and we ask our supply chain partners to disclose their sustainability initiatives and progress. We are committed to reducing our energy intensity, increasing our recycling, selecting non-hazardous alternatives to conventional products, promoting efficient transport and green cleaning. We strive to educate our patients, caregivers and communities. Our suppliers are required to provide sustainability data if requested to help us continue to reach our goals.

Excelerate is a provider-led, physician engaged joint venture between Cleveland Clinic health system and Vizient that delivers significant and sustainable savings to healthcare organizations. It enables members to achieve rapid and significant cost improvements through physician and clinical integration within high-cost service lines.

Excelerate uses data-driven decisions targeting quality and clinically relevant outcome-based sourcing while providing peer-to-peer collaboration that drives clinical alignment, leading evidence based products and utilization practices.

Excelerate’s mission is to deliver significant and sustainable savings to healthcare organizations through a physician-engagement sourcing model.