Today in health, it. , discussion around sustainability. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week health. A set of channels dedicated to keeping health it staff current. And engaged. We want to thank our show sponsor, short investing in developing the next generation of health leaders, accordion dynamics, Quill health tau site nuance, Canon medical, and current health. Check them out at this week. Health.

Dot com slash today. All right today. I want to talk about sustainability. I had a phenomenal conversation last week with Mike Pfeffer, , with, , Stanford. And he really challenged my thinking on some stuff. And I want to challenge your thinking with the things he challenged me with and we will eventually.

I have Mike on the show to discuss some of this stuff. It was just really excellent thinking and leadership on the part of Stanford and on the part of, , Mike and his team. And we started talking about sustainability. And again, this was at a 2 29 groups. So There was 12th CEO's in the room. Add.

, each one was sort of sharing something that they were excited about, that they, , that their organization had done, that they feel like their peers would benefit from. And Mike threw this out and it was really challenging. And it was around that whole concept of sustainability. How sustainable is your it organization?

And he shared three different areas, how we work, how we spend and how we invest. Okay. How we work. , workplace optimization. Are you optimizing in the deployment of people where they're at, how they interact with each other? , one of the things he challenged us with, he goes, do you know what the carbon footprint of a video call? It could be zoom could be teams.

And we didn't really know. And I'm not going to tell you, go ahead and look it up. There's a couple of studies that have been done. , making everybody show up on video is not necessarily the right thing to do. It might be the right thing to do from a culture standpoint. It might be the wrong thing to do from a sustainability standpoint, also in the category of how we work.

He had, , things like, , onsite equipment rationalization. Reduction in commute. And travel. , emissions obviously fall into that category. But the other thing , he, , challenged us. On was, , the deployment of our equipment and how we think about that, that actually comes into the next category as well. How we spend, you know, aligning procurement policies and processes to sustainable vendors.

, was one of the things, , supplies and supplier rationalization, fewer suppliers, fewer supplies being used. , one of the questions he asked us was around, why your life cycles, why have you chosen a five-year life cycle? Why not a six year life cycle on a desktop? Or what are you doing to take a laptop and turn it into a four year or five year life cycle of why have we decided the life cycles are what they are and then how we spend, how are we.

Utilizing our money to influence the vendors that were doing business with. To think different about sustainability on their Why are they making stuff end of life. At the time they are making them end of life. Are they really end of life? Or is it something that could get another year or two out of

If the partners, the vendor partners that we were working with. , we're actually, , , attempting to, , extend that life span for a sustainability , the other thing that we talked about a fair amount was. , the whole idea of the procurement process. Do we ask our vendors what their sustainability practices

Do we have a way of measuring that? Do we have a form sorta like we do with the security form that we send them? To make sure that they're going to, live up to the security requirements for our health system. Do we have a sustainability form that they fill out? And the third thing was how we invest. Right? So we're moving a lot of this stuff to the cloud.

Is that the right boof? Are we picking the right vendors based on sustainability? Are they conscious of. , what they're doing from a sustainability standpoint or an environment standpoint from that perspective. It was a really fascinating conversation. Got me to think. And then the great thing about it was it wasn't a political conversation.

Because this could just come down to financials. It's just better. Financial stewardship to have sustainability. , plan in place, you're going to spend less money. You're going to be more efficient, more effective with the resources you're given. And at this time when we're seeing health system financials be, , tight, it's a it's worth looking at. And as you know, if you've been following me on social media, you know, I'm actually on vacation this week.

I am up here at a glacier. , national park. It is truly amazing.

And I thought what a great topic to share on this day. A little shorter episode than usual, but, , again, great thinking. I will have Mike back on the show on the, on the conference show to talk through some of this stuff. Cause I think it is, it shows their leadership. In this area and I love what they're doing again, how we work, how we spend and how we invest and how sustainable.

Is your health it organization. All right. That's all for today. If you know someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week. health.com. Or wherever you listen to podcasts, apple, Google, overcast, Spotify, Stitcher. You get the picture. We are everywhere.

We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders, Gordian dynamics, Quill health tau site nuance, Canon medical, and 📍 current health. Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Thanks for listening. That's all for