Delivering a Net Zero NHS: sharing best practice

Digital panel discussion with Matthew Swindells, former Deputy Chief Executive of NHS England and Improvement; Dr Nick Watts, Chief Sustainability Officer, NHS England and Improvement; Jason Snape, Global Head of Environmental Protection, AstraZeneca; Elizabeth Beall, Practice Lead for Climate and Sustainability, Global Counsel; and Séverine Turgis, Senior Associate on Climate and Sustainability, Global Counsel discussing the lessons to be learnt when it comes to green plans, and the expected role Trusts and ICS's can play to support the national targets to reach net zero by 2050.

Highlights from the discussion:

• Dr Nick Watts emphasised the importance of investment into a more efficient estate as a core enabler to a greener NHS. The investment into making the NHS estate more carbon-efficient has been a priority, with £310m invested annually over the next three years. Séverine Turgis emphasised that given the NHS has thousands of sites of different sizes, finding a way to heat them with carbon-neutral sources will be important. This will include gearing up the older buildings to be more efficient and potentially finding profoundly inefficient buildings and replacing them. Matthew Swindells called on the NHS to link this into NHS priorities to reduce costs, along with accompanying it with changes to NHS staffing to enable people to work from home where possible or charge electric cars on-site. The speakers agreed that with the national vision taking shape, the next challenge will be for the NHS to take ownership of this locally, including at the hospital and ICS levels.
   
• Energy efficiency should be knitted to the wider discussion of what healthcare looks like in the 21th Century. The participants were in agreement on the importance of using new ways of working, which the NHS has picked up over covid-19, and which can help to inspire more carbon-friendly delivered healthcare. On this, the panel discussed how more online consultations and better leveraging of local community resources to remove processes that aren’t fit for the healthcare and environmental challenges of the 21st Century, such as patients travelling to a faraway hospital when services could be delivered closer to them. This will require reimagining patient-centric healthcare and how it can be part of the net zero road. Jason Snape identified how core changes to ways of working, including the adoption of precision and early intervention will help to deliver better outcomes for patients in a way that doesn’t require the use of high energy-intensive remedies at more serious stages. The panel agreed that data will play a large part in paving the way with net-zero, with patient data along with energy usage data a core enabler to net-zero ambitions. For this, better data will be required on where waste and emissions come from.
   
• Both Dr Nick Watts and Jason Snape spoke about the importance of a more connected supply chain to help realise the NHS’s commitment to become Carbon Neutral. Dr Watts emphasised the importance of working together with suppliers to make sure that the NHS are aware of what sort of carbon footprint each good contains. With the NHS looking to find more clinically correct and less polluting alternative drugs, it is imperative that there is close engagement with the supply chain, with the NHS preferring clients who are aligned with their own net-zero strategy. From a pharmaceutical perspective, Jason Snape spoke about identifying which drugs include high emissions and investing in relevant research & development for remedies that are better for the environment. The panel agreed that in order for this to work for the NHS, there will need to be an alignment on common metrics and data, with better quality data on the carbon footprint of hospitals and products vital to meeting emission targets. The panel then heard how collaboration between the NHS and pharma is in motion, with ten pharma companies having launched Energise, a purchase agreement to help the supply chain access better energy at lower cost, at COP26.