Reducing healthcare waste by eliminating exam table paper in a primary care practice: a sustainable quality improvement initiative.

Purpose: Climate change is now the greatest threat to human survival. The healthcare system contributes significantly to global pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Individual practitioners play an important role in helping to reduce these impacts in day-to-day practice. Deimplementation of unnecessary processes and products, such as exam table paper, in medical offices is one simple approach to incorporating principles of planetary health into practice. All quality improvement (QI) projects must start to consider environmental impacts to fully evaluate change ideas.

Methods: We designed a single Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle using the Institute for Health Improvement Model for Improvement. We removed the exam table paper from our primary care office and measured changes in staff time, laundry, financial costs, paper use and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.

Results: Eliminating exam table paper in our clinic resulted in modest annual cost savings of $C718 and improved staff efficiency and motivation to introduce other green office practices. In our clinic alone, this change will save 8.2 km of exam table paper, 10 trees and 148 kg of CO2e (equivalent to driving 1233 km) every year. There were no negative consequences or feedback.

Conclusions: This simple QI project demonstrates the feasibility of implementing a small change in a primary care clinic that can improve environmental sustainability with multiple co-benefits. If all family physicians in Canada eliminated exam table paper in their offices, it would result in savings of approximately 95 940 km of paper, 121 680 trees, $C8 400 600 and 3054 T CO₂ emissions, equivalent to driving around the world 360 times.