Hospitals and health systems must do more to combat climate change and could face new regulations on the issue, according to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine.
Levine spoke about the role hospitals can play in addressing climate change during a reporter briefing held Thursday by the Alliance for Health Policy. Her remarks come a few months after HHS established a new office aimed at improving health equity and combating climate change.
“We are looking specifically at resilience in the healthcare sector and working with systems to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions,” Levine said.
She added that the U.S. healthcare sector accounts for 8.5% of carbon emissions in the country.
Levine noted she wants to work with health systems to find ways to lower their carbon emissions, potentially through voluntary measures.
“They understand impact of climate change now as in the future,” Levine said of health system leaders. “A lot of these measures are going to be voluntary and will help them in terms of their bottom line.”
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Any measures will likely be tailored to a specific region, too, as another key priority is improving resilience among hospitals to better prepare for and handle climate disasters.
“Challenges for the southwest will be very different in terms of heat-related issues than on the east and the coast where Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina sea level rise is going to be important,” she said.
Sea level rise stemming from climate change could contribute to greater flooding in certain parts of the country, but there could be other crises hospitals face due to climate change, and extreme heat could lead to more forest fires.
Levine said some facilities have done more to address resiliency to improve their operations. She gave an example of hospitals in New Orleans that fared much better during Hurricane Ida than Katrina because they built “resilience into the system.”
For now, the HHS office is still exploring the exact measures it wants for hospitals to lower emissions and prepare for climate disasters. But while Levine said she hopes for voluntary measures, she didn’t rule out new regulations.
“We will be looking across HHS at what regulatory levers we might be able to use to encourage health systems to do that,” she said. “Those levers could be with [the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] or other divisions. None of that is officially decided.”