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EW IN OTHER NEWS January 2011 69 W ith fears of the econ- omy being hit by a double-dip recession, developing an envi- ronmentally con- scious practice is probably the last thing on the minds of most practice owners. No one would argue, however, that making one's practice as cost-ef- ficient as possible is good for busi- ness. Fortunately for the planet, practice owners can kill two birds with one stone. "If you think about it overall, al- most anything that you might do in order to spare materials or travel is good for operating costs as well as good for the planet," said John B. Pinto, president, J. Pinto & Associ- ates, San Diego. Keeping distances short For example, between flying across the country to observe a colleague in surgery and uploading a video feed with the ability to have the same conversation and observation, the latter is going to cost less, take less time, and put less carbon into the atmosphere. For a practice that is dependent on the majority of its patients travel- ing long distances in private auto- mobiles in order to get to the clinic, owners can consider the develop- ment of satellite offices to bring care to patients. If there are staff mem- bers who are right on the edge of being able to afford driving to work, make an effort to hire more people who live closer to the office and see what can be done to encourage ride- sharing among staff, Mr. Pinto ad- vised. Another thing that one can do, which is both cost-efficient and green, is to eliminate satellite offices that are no longer performing well. It may seem like a relatively trivial cost to be driving staff and doctors all over to get to patients, Mr. Pinto said, but practice satellites that are barely economically efficient today will become much less so as energy costs go up. Saving space and resources There's also the issue of how much office space is needed by a practice, Mr. Pinto said. "Over the last genera- tion, we've seen the typical exam room move from somewhere in the range of 150 square feet down to below 100 square feet." People learn to get by on less office space, so rather than assume that you can only have a solo practice with 500 patients a month in a 3,000-square- foot facility, see what can be done to bring that down to 15,000 square feet. "You will use a lot less resources and you'll be ecologically more cor- rect, but more than that, you'll save half of your facility costs, which could bring 3-4% points of profit to the bottom line," Mr. Pinto said. Also, look around your facility; look at how many sheets of paper you're using and ask yourself how much of that you really need to be printing or copying and filing, and how much of it you can store elec- tronically. For practices that are in the midst of developing a new office or ASC facility, instead of using materi- als that are going to be cheapest dol- lar for dollar, think long term and go for what's going to be more cost-ef- fective and environmentally con- scious over the lifetime of the building, Mr. Pinto recommended. Whether it's in the individual doctor's office or in the overall facil- ity, one doesn't have to go very far to see that we're burning a lot more electricity than we need to be. Prac- tices in Europe routinely have mo- tion-sensitive or set timers on their wall outlets so that lights will be off in a room until someone walks in, Mr. Pinto said. These can be in- stalled inexpensively in offices and laboratory facilities. Scrubbing it up Practice owners can win on several levels by putting all the staff in scrubs rather than having them wear expensive, professionally cleaned clothes to the office everyday, Mr. Pinto said. Providers can save hun- dreds of dollars in cleaning costs alone by asking employees to wear scrubs. Also, there is a unified look and feel that portrays a more profes- sional appearance to patients, Mr. Pinto explained. Having staff wear scrubs is also more sanitary. Studies have shown that the dirtiest things in a hospital or medical office are male doctors' by Enette Ngoei EyeWorld Contributing Editor Accidentally green " Almost anything that you might do in order to spare materials or travel is good for operating costs as well as good for the planet. " continued on page 70

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