Shirley Ryan abilitiesyLab Deserves new Joint Fee Sustainability Award

With assist from Compass One Healthcare, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab has reached one other milestone in its dedication to environmental stewardship.

The Chicago-based rehabilitation hospital, recognized for treating sufferers with stroke, spinal twine and mind accidents, has acquired the Joint Fee’s new Sustainability Healthcare Certification. It’s the first hospital in Illinois and the primary rehabilitation hospital within the nation to obtain this recognition.

On the middle of this effort is Lamar Davis, Basic Supervisor of Compass One Healthcare at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. Referred to as the hospital’s “sustainability guru,” Davis has overseen sustainability initiatives for the reason that hospital opened eight years in the past. He coordinates the efforts of Compass One’s service traces, together with environmental providers, meals and diet providers, services administration and medical engineering.

“Most of the sustainability applications within the Compass One portfolio supplied the spine to our buyer’s success in attaining this certification,” mentioned Carter Berry, Regional Director of Operations. “Lamar has intensive information of those applications and has labored carefully with hospital management to perform every part crucial to realize certification.”

Serving to the client obtain sustainability

Because the opening of the hospital in 2017, sustainability has been a core worth. Preliminary efforts embody measuring carbon emissions and establishing benchmarks to information long-term enhancements. Since then, vitality consumption, CO2 emissions and waste manufacturing have decreased considerably. Recycling continues to broaden and management is exploring renewable vitality choices, together with wind and photo voltaic.

When the Joint Fee introduced its new sustainability certification program in January 2024, Davis instantly noticed a possibility.

“Now we have had a sustainability program in place for the reason that hospital opened, and this certification has helped us take a contemporary take a look at our efforts and make them even stronger,” he mentioned.

With approval from hospital management, Davis led knowledge assortment, drafted a Strategic Sustainability Plan and an Operational Plan, and guided each via board evaluate. Certification was accomplished in January 2025.

Extra enhancements in prospect

Wanting forward, Davis and his workforce intention to scale back carbon emissions by 3 to five% by 2030. Every service line has set particular targets to assist this work:

• Environmental Providers: Enhance recycling by 5% via employees coaching, compliance audits and focused reminders.

• Meals providers: Provoke hospital-wide composting and practice nursing employees to divert affected person meals waste from normal waste.

• Scientific Engineering: Improve battery recycling with employees coaching, waste audits and an IT partnership for correct disposal.

• Facility Administration: Scale back vitality consumption by 2% (growth purpose: 5%) via utility monitoring, new applied sciences, and nighttime setbacks at distant services.

Obtain long-term targets

These steps will convey the hospital nearer to its overarching purpose of decreasing its carbon footprint by 40% by 2030. The plans embody decreasing vitality consumption by 15%, doubling recycling charges from 20% to 40% and rising the usage of renewable vitality sources.

The certification is legitimate via 2027, after which the Joint Fee will assess progress towards these targets.

“We’re all the time proud to assist the hospital obtain success and be acknowledged as a pacesetter,” mentioned Berry. “With Lamar working carefully with senior administration, we’ll proceed to construct a sustainability program that may function a mannequin for different hospitals.”