What Matters and Where: Managing Sustainability in the Healthcare Sector

As a financial strategy within healthcare, sustainability can drive benefits including cost reductions and return on capital, improved patient experience/outcomes and worker safety, business continuity and risk management, human capital development and reputation management. These benefits link directly to performance improvement, can reduce costs (either directly or indirectly), and have quantifiable financial impacts. As a result, the healthcare sector will benefit by incorporating sustainability considerations into its business strategies at the clinical, operational, and supply chain levels.

Although many businesses are starting to invest in sustainability projects and programs, even more struggle to make the case internally to incorporate sustainability into the decision-making process and day-to-day operations. This paper outlines proven strategies, including value chain Impact MappingSM and Natural Capital Accounting, for identifying what matters, where it matters, and how much it matters to better manage sustainability. The business outcome is a systematic approach for mapping, measuring and ultimately understanding how to create value and grow revenue by taking sustainability into account.