Mapping Greener HealthcareMapping Greener Healthcare

Goal: To reduce the paper work associated with short-term admissions.

Background: The unit decided to review the use of admission booklets for patients. The team identified that admissions booklets for short-stay patients were too long and used an unnecessary amount of time and paper. By reducing the short-stay admissions booklet the team realised that they would be able to dedicate more time to patient care while reducing paper procurement and paper waste.

Approach:

1. The SAU team worked together to assess the admission booklet.

2. Together, they identified the key pages to keep and reduced the

   booklet from 27 pages to 6 pages.

3. They began using the 6-page admission booklet with short-stay

   patients, roughly 3 or 4 a day.

Savings:

The annual paper savings from the admission booklet reduction, assuming 4 shortened booklets a day, amount to 15,750 sheets of paper. This totals to 6.3 boxes of paper at £7.50 each, generating a yearly procurement saving of £47.25. Further downstream, this averts 69 kg of paper from the waste stream, generating an additional £6.90 in yearly recycling costs. The yearly carbon savings from this amount to 64 kg CO2e for paper production and 1.4 kg CO2e for paper disposal. The time savings for the work are impressive, with 1.5 hours of band 5 nurse time save a day, amounting to 375 hours a year. Assuming a £23,000 salary cost for a band 5 nurse, the yearly time savings amount to £4,739. The total annual savings could amount to £4,793.15 and 65.4 kg CO2e.