In recent years, growing evidence and urgency have drawn increasing attention to the close links between a changing climate and health, and to the risks that related events bring to population health and health systems infrastructure. Yet despite these documented impacts, this issue has until recently been given relatively little attention in the broader health policy agenda.
Health systems themselves represent an important source of greenhouse gas emissions across OECD countries. On average across OECD countries, more than 4% of greenhouse gas emissions were associated with countries’ health sectors in 2018, a share in some cases higher than sectors that have received more attention for their roles in producing emissions, like aviation. At the same time, there is significant scope for health systems to take steps that lower their greenhouse gas emissions – so called, mitigation policies. While this applies to any health system, this is even more relevant for health systems across the OECD, where important levels of waste and overutilisation of healthcare represent a challenge not only in terms of costs, but also in terms of environmental impact.
This report looks at the state of decarbonisation efforts in the health sector across OECD countries, including the contribution of the health system to greenhouse gas emissions and what countries are doing to reduce the environmental impact of their health sectors by reducing the carbon footprint. It leverages datasets from both the OECD System of Health Accounts and OECD Inter-Country Input-Output Tables to provide novel measures of the emissions from health systems, including decomposing health sector emissions by scope and healthcare provider.
It further shows that countries that are committed to reducing emissions associated with their health systems have a range of policies they can follow to support decarbonisation efforts. For example, on average across OECD countries, hospitals represent an estimated 30% of emissions associated with the healthcare sector. A transformation of healthcare that places additional emphasis on primary care could lower emissions and also generate savings for health systems. Reducing inappropriate care and waste and the time spent in hospitals could reduce the emissions associated with hospital care by as much as 25% on average across OECD countries. Other relevant policy levers could include introducing environmental criteria in the procurement of medical products; and scaling up public health policies that create healthier populations and reduce the overall need for care services.