It is recognised that health and care systems are undergoing transformative global change to adapt to the needs of patients and communities, with increasing pressure to be financially, socially and environmentally sustainable. Appraising the sustainability of care pathways is seen as a crucial step to enabling a more sustainable health system. To facilitate the completion of care pathway assessments, it is necessary to generate data that characterises the impact of the common care pathways activities. In generating these data, valuable insight is provided into the environmental hotspots associated with each activity.

AstraZeneca UK Limited sponsored just such an environmental assessment at ULS de Braga Hospital located in Portugal for the purpose of facilitating care pathway assessments and to assist ULS de Braga in understanding its environmental impact. As well as providing insight into the overall hospital’s footprint, the study appraised the environmental impact of activities undertaken in the hospital as a whole and in three clinical departments in ULS de Braga: emergency department, general ward and intensive care ward.

AstraZeneca UK Limited and their technical partner, ERM Limited have worked with Sustainable Healthcare Coalition to make data and insights from the study available in the case study and supplementary clinical department documents presented here.