Is Hospitals Ready for Energy Management and Green Building? Health Managers Opinions in Turkey

Hospitals are of special interest for health promotion and the hospital sector is one of the biggest entrepreneurs in Turkey. Hospitals could be a strong partner for public health issues and also hospital sector has a heavy consumption of material and energy and a huge production of waste and carbon dioxide. This study summarizes research findings concerning knowledge, attitudes and behavior relevant to energy and environmental subjects of health managers. A survey was conducted with 47 decision-makers in nine leader private hospital in Turkey. Survey examines what the healthcare leaders are thinking about the energy management, green hospitals and what healthcare organizations are doing in response to rising energy costs, what factors are motivating efficiency improvements, how many organizations are planning to make investments, what payback they expect on energy efficiency investments, and what technologies and practices they have been implementing in their facilities. Energy performance monitoring is doing in 50 % of hospitals and in 40 % of hospitals there is a budget for energy. There are energy mangers in 45 % of hospitals. Only 18 % of healthcare leaders are defining the hospitals as environmentally friendly and just 2 % of hospitals have Leed certificate. Only the 2 % of hospitals are using just cogeneration systems and are not using the other renewable energy resources. According to 30 % of healthcare leaders the most importance of energy management using in hospitals is decreasing the costs and the second importance is the safety to global warming. Energy efficiency is getting more attention among healthcare facility leaders. They were very or fairly concerned about climate change, they are paying attention to energy management in hospitals and most of them are thinking that energy efficiency and the usage of renewable energy resources in hospitals are very important.