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Leading the Way: VA provider makes medical facility greener

When Jesse Brown VA’s Assistant Chief of Anesthesiology Dr. Gretchen Fox brought an innovative anesthetic gas capturing and recycling system to her facility, she wasn’t aware of the positive environmental impacts it would have. Initially, she sought to fix the lack of operating room space at her VA. But it turned out her discovery had a bigger impact than she could have imagined.

“In anesthesiology, we see that 95% of our delivered anesthetic gasses are wasted and pumped out the hospital’s roof. Because the gasses are seven times heavier than air, they sink to the ground, which is the surrounding sidewalks where patients and workers tend to be.”

The gas capturing and recycling system collects expired anesthetic gasses that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere from the top of the medical facility. The waste is collected into canisters, cleaned and recycled into a reusable anesthetic gas.

VA campuses are meeting spots for Veterans, so it’s essential to keep these spaces safe.

Equivalent to planting 125,000 trees

The adoption of this technology not only made the air surrounding Jesse Brown cleaner, it reduced the facility’s emissions by 30%. To put this into perspective, the facility would have had to plant 125,000 trees to offset these emissions.

After successfully adopting the technology at Jesse Brown, Fox (pictured above) and then-Green Environmental Management Systems Manager Justin Macadangdang started Project Capturing Anesthetics Toward Climate Health (CATCH). The campaign advocates for adopting gas recycling systems across VA nationwide.

Project CATCH’s technology will lead to cost savings over time, which means allocating resources more efficiently to provide high-quality care and support services for Veterans. Because of Fox’s and Macadangdang’s efforts, CATCH won the 2022 VA Sustainability Award for Climate Innovation.

VA has “made ourselves a resilient institution,” Fox said. “We’ve figured out how to capture gas. We’ve figured out how to decrease our energy pull.”

As federal health systems shift towards sustainable care practices, VA is embracing leading the way in making health care delivery more environmentally sustainable with initiatives like CATCH. Implementing sustainable health care practices leads to a safer VA for today’s Veterans and future generations, making VA a place Veterans can continue to rely on for the best quality care despite disruption from climate-related shocks and stressors.

To learn more about VA’s sustainability efforts, visit Energy, Environment, and Fleet Program – U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

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