Environment-Concerned Hospital: More than just “Green”

Why Green?

Concerns about the declining ecological balance and environment have triggered new policies aiming to minimize the destructive effects. In micro-macro scale, it has been long known the so-called “green city” and “green infrastructure” concepts. Initially, Green Building was a rooftop installment that had been no more than empty space. Through this green building concept, the empty space has been improved in its usage as urban farming activities. The rooftop here reduces the CO2 emission and has become a natural ecological-friendly solution to minimize the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect.

Today the green building concept has no longer physically-oriented into the building, instead of it has been an integrated system to manage a sustainable and comprehensive protection on the environment. The main principle is that a green building is a system consisting all ecological aspects such as energy conservation, adjustments over climate change, resource management, and site building considering the nearby surroundings.

Green building furthermore has meant to maximize energy usage in the building in order to reduce the CO2 emission and keep the balance in the environment. Green building has now been represented in energy-saving structure competition held by Jimmy Priatman (Architect of Universitas Kristen Petra Surabaya) by developing green building based on energy efficiency. Jimmy designs a four-floor building with capacity for about 13.000 persons and has succeed conducting a massive energy efficiency through layout technique and more efficient ventilation, reaching up an electricity saving for about 50 to 60 percent.

Green Building as Hospital

Green building particularly in hospital must be different with those in other common buildings. This is because besides energy conservancy and waste management, it is also considered important to put the building in right spot towards the wind directions. The Hospital Review webpage explains that in 1970, hospitals in California have been implemented the green concept beyond the physical appearance or grass park, but also pinpoint a totally new environmental-friendly design. The strategy used in this project was to certify with LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) which has been long known in developing ecological principles such as efficiency in AC usage, light ambiance, and naturally-handled recycling process, all without touch of human hands.

Sutter Health (Sutter Medical Center of Santa Rosa) has been the one hospital used to develop the green design. The green design concept used was a modern, green, and anti-shake hospital building. The Sutter Health put more pressure on 4 elements of all: (1) resource conservancy, (2) alternative energy, (3) water conservancy, (4) and green-house gas. The hospital has been continuously evaluating their system considering other kinds of energy and sustainable technology to dispose carbon dioxide. Potential future energy source later developed has been solar panels and photovoltaics.

Other than Sutter Medical Center, the Gundersen Health System works together with several hospitals in Wisconsin to develop green building and green energy. The Gundersen Health System has been known for their efforts to develop energy infrastructure using geothermal heat pump system, which had been used as energy source. This geothermal heat pump system works as a pattern in a hospital using the heat from the earth mantle to be converted into energy consoled as water gathered in a steam stew, and it can be used to heat the building during winter time. Energy generated from geothermal can also be provided to sterilize medical tools. This pattern can save energy usage in an estimated 70-80 kbtu/year, reducing our dependence on fossil-based fuel.

How to realize it?

Green hospital concept in Indonesia today requires further study, considering that this is not related with hospitals only. Other studies will this be pinpointed over the consideration of “general treatments” for all hospitals or will this will cost higher for patients. Before applying this concept, it will be needed such phases in implementing standards. This process will be including term hierarchy for standardizations. This phase could be 5 or 10 years, hospitals must be prepared for the green terms in natural aspects such as open spaces, green belt, in-house lighting system, and rooftop gardens.

Green hospital concepts for old buildings can be started by reconstructing some parts to adjust air circulation and lighting system. Using big windows will be one consideration. For surroundings, waste management and open spaces can be combined more likely as green belt, using Shorea Lepsula plant that has been long known as CO2 absorbing. The more tight the plant sites are, the more CO2 to absorb. 

In the next phase, a 10-15 –year term, green hospital criteria will be implemented in greenery system. Energy-safe Air conditioning, clean water management will be using rain tank underground. The next implementation, the third period, in 15 to 20 years, the hospital with all be standardized green hospital aspects, with provided physical instruments such as solar cells, photovoltaic, geothermal heat pump system, and recyclable waste. Further steps for this kind of hospital can be accomplished with newly criteria written in AMDAL documents.

Other considerations will be clarifying the green hospital types. Some hospitals are not forced to provide physical things like solar system, photovoltaic, and other alternatives source. For fulfilling the standards for a type A hospital (e.g. for small districts) will be enough with rooftops, greenbelts and sun rays. The next policy will be simply to certify the hospitals.

In Indonesia, certifications such as 9001:2000 have been long known as international base for quality management. The ISO guarantees a management system and product quality as ruled. That certification hopefully can fix the health service in providing infrastructures to make sure that patients have their best service.