RCPsych Explores Carbon Accounting at the Patient Level

I went to the RCPsych and HEFMA conference in Birmingham last week. It was great to have the expertise and knowledge of HEFMA in the same room as those interested in sustainability at the RCPsych. We had some really useful discussions about moving forward from the current position of measuring the carbon footprint of Mental Health Trusts at a macro level towards carbon accounting at a patient level.

In recent years in the NHS, estates and facilities managers have been responsible for providing information about the carbon-footprint of a Trust. This information is then fed into a national database called ERIC (Estates Return Information Collection). This then enables a
comparison to be made about a Trusts carbon footprint both over time and between Trusts. Comparisons are made at local and national level and have in some cases, such as Nottingham Healthcare NHS FT, demonstrated really encouraging carbon reductions in line with the Climate Change Act's targets.

Jerome Baddley from Nottingham Energy Partnership gave an interesting talk on ‘footprinting mental health’. He noted that the quality of data from ERIC is one of the issues currently hindering the move towards more precise carbon accounting. He noted the importance of
getting key leaders  nterested in sustainability issues within each Trust which then creates greater focus on capturing relevant carbon data. This process has clearly occurred in Nottingham Healthcare NHS FT where Mark Starr performed his component service analysis.

Mark Starr gave an inspiring talk on the need for flexible bottom-up systems of reporting carbon costs. He argued that in order to more fully identify areas for potential carbon reduction there needs to be a system of carbon accounting that is accessible to every staff member within a Trust. His vision is that there is a sufficiently detailed carbon cost attached to each patient pathway which allows frontline staff to identify areas for carbon reduction within their own service. Through this bottom-up approach each member of staff can then develop a sense of responsibility about the carbon cost of their service. He argued that if carbon accounting uses the same principles as financial accounting then the data becomes accessible to all types of staff, rather than it being merely a Board level issue, as continues to happen in some Trusts.

The challenge now is to integrate the experience gained about carbon costing from HEFMA with new ways of acquiring and looking at data. More discussion is to be had at the upcoming HEFMA conference in May 2013 about the potential for advancing this exciting idea of measuring the carbon impact of mental health services.