In order to best assist hospitals and facility staff in their effort to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions and overall costs, Health Care Without Harm, Practice Greenhealth, and the Healthier Hospitals Initiative have released a comprehensive tool - Energy Information and Resources for Hospitals in New Hampshire. This paper, which was made possible by funding from the John Merck Fund, lays out numerous options for rebates, loans, and other financial assistance and endeavors that can help hospitals meet their goals for lean energy.

Hospitals strive every day to ensure the health and wellbeing of patients and communities. With a broadening focus on health, not just health care, more and more hospitals recognize that human and environmental health are fundamentally connected, and have committed to various environmental initiatives. Environmental stewardship is an essential piece of the goal to create a sustainable health system, one that improves the lives of the patients and communities, for generations to come. Many New Hampshire hospitals have joined hospitals across the country in the Healthier Hospitals Initiative (HHI), working to reduce energy and waste, use safer and less toxic products, and to purchase and serve healthier food.

HHI was launched by twelve sponsoring hospital systems-Advocate Health Care, Bon Secours Health System, Catholic Health Initiatives, Dignity Health, Gundersen Health System, Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), Inova Health System, Kaiser Permanente, MedStar Health, Partners HealthCare, Stanford University Medical Center, and Tenet Health Systems (including former Vanguard Health System)-along with Practice Greenhealth, Health Care Without Harm and the Center for Health Design, in May 2010.

For further ease of use, a Quick Guide of all the resources and opportunities mentioned in this paper is attached in an Excel document. These sources are explained in greater detail in the paper and Guide, which shows the sources in a snapshot.

The parallel paper released late last year for Massachusetts can be accessed here.