ISO 14001 for Mental Healthcare Facilities

[Stuart Bowles]

Hey Guys,

I am new to this forum, but already I am lost in the wealth of information and articles, and looking at things that are unrelated to my current pursuit. I'm sorry if there is any duplication, I have found articles on pharmaceuticals but not exactly the situation I am in.

I work for an environmental charity, we offer a wide range of free and paid for environmental services to the local area. We are a non profit organisation with a main objective of reducing environmental impacts. We have started offering ISO 14001 to organisations to enable them to address environmental impacts and allow us to generate some much needed funds. We have done a couple of ISO 14001's in smallish organisations, including local offices and a community recycling company, but nothing on the following scale:

We have been approached by a large mental healthcare provider, who is interested in having one of their sites accredited to ISO 14001. The site has basic healthcare facilities and low to medium security units. The turnover of the site is around £20million with 300 employees and 150 residents/patients. and I was hoping to get some guidance and ideas on how best to approach this.

Our current position is;
Assessing environmental impacts - we have the usuals; energy, waste, water, etc. Its the ones associated with healthcare provision we are unsure of.

Carbon Reduction Commitment - The organisation falls under the carbon reduction commitment. Is there any pointers for integrating the CRC into the ISO 14001, or shall we look into the ISO 14064?

Patient training - the organisation is very interested in making the ISO 14001 checking and monitoring into a programme for a patient, to build skills ready for reintroduction into the community. We have a track record of this kind of thing, but not specifically for recovering mentally ill individuals, any pointers on this would be great.

It would be great if there is any example policies, manuals and procedures for healthcare facilities that I could access.


I look forward to hearing from you,

Stuart

 

[samsung]

Carbon Reduction Commitment - The organisation falls under the carbon reduction commitment. Is there any pointers for integrating the CRC into the ISO 14001, or shall we look into the ISO 14064?

ISO 14001 and 14064 both are different standards with different sets of objectives. ISO 14001 is basically meant for an organization to manage it's environmental aspects & impacts whereas ISO 14064 was developed to provide the organizations outside of mandatory or regulated realms, with a tool for monitoring, reporting and verifying their carbon footprints (GHG emissions) as part of their corporate social responsibility.

Now as for the pointer for carbon emission reduction, neither 14001 nor 14064 provides any indicators on their own. Consider carbon emission as an environment aspect/ Significant Aspect and use ISO 14001 based EMS to integrate and manage it. After all there has to be a policy, objective and a mechanism/ action plan with which to control/ reduce the emissions (carbon footprints). And ISO 14001 does provide an excellent platform not only for achieving the policy commitments but also for improving the system performance.

Yet you may need 14064 to enable you to ensure the credibility, consistency, and transparency of GHG accounting and reporting

It would be great if there is any example policies, manuals and procedures for healthcare facilities that I could access.

Here you can have a "Health Care Guide to Pollution Prevention Implementation through Environmental Management Systems". I hope this guidance manual with embedded case studies will enable you to create your own EMS manual, policy and objectives.

 

[somashekar]

Patient training - the organisation is very interested in making the ISO 14001 checking and monitoring into a programme for a patient, to build skills ready for reintroduction into the community. We have a track record of this kind of thing, but not specifically for recovering mentally ill individuals, any pointers on this would be great.

Samsung has given some insight into the standards you mention.
Patient in the scope of the mental healthcare facility is an input in some form and an output in a better form. They would not fall under the catagory of human resources that will implement and maintain the EMS in the facility. These inputs and outputs are ever changing and the thought to build skills ready for reintroduction of these people into the community would be a nobel task, however would not be a part of the EMS requirement of the facility. I guess they would have no authority, responsibility or accountability within the EMS scope.
This can be treated like any other facility going into EMS implementation. Do the initial environmental review of the facility, to get the as is status and apply the "what aspects and what impacts" analysis and include the legal as one of your significant aspect per the local regulations, to derive the significant aspects to bring about various control measures over them.

 

[Stuart Bowles]

Thank you for your inputs.

Thank you for clearing up the use of the ISO 14064. I am now touching up on the Carbon Reduction Commitment and going to integrate this targets within the EMS. I was considering obtaining a copy of the ISO 14064 to ensure credibility, as Samsung rightly stated.
The manual you have provided is great and exactly what I am looking for. It should allow me to build the manual, policy and objectives.

Somashekar, thank you for clearing up the position of the patients within the EMS. I was just unsure if the use of patients to monitor and check needed to be within the scope. I think, to ensure quality, they will be shadowing staff anyway, so I don't think I will need to take this further.

Thank you for your help, your insights have been useful.