Johnson & Johnson Report: 54% of Hospitals Say Green Attributes Important in Purchasing

More than one-third (35 percent) of hospitals surveyed switched suppliers to gain access to sustainable health-care products, according to a new report by Johnson & Johnson that finds hospitals are placing greater emphasis on “green” products used in patient care and throughout the facilities such as cleaning products and office supplies.

The company released the report, The Growing Importance of More Sustainable Products in the Global Health Care Industry, today at the 2012 CleanMed Europe Conference.

Other key findings:

• Fifty-four percent of hospitals say green attributes are very important in purchasing decisions.
• Forty percent of hospitals expect their future RFPs to include questions or criteria about products’ green attributes.
• More than 85 percent of hospitals rate being free of heavy metals and latex, end-of-life solutions and energy efficiency as important attributes.

Johnson & Johnson commissioned healthcare marketing company SK&A to conduct global research on the state of sustainable products in the health-care industry. The non-blind research was conducted in January 2012 and surveyed key decision-makers within Institutional Delivery Networks and hospitals in Brazil, Germany, Italy and the US online and via phone interviews.

Survey participants included health-care professionals, procurement/materials management professionals and executives.

The research firm completed 50 surveys in Germany and Italy, 62 surveys in Brazil and 145 in the US.

Johnson & Johnson earned the no. 1 ranking (45 percent) when hospitals were asked to rate 10 health-care manufacturers on the basis of their “green sustainability.” Boston Scientific (42 percent), Zimmer (40 percent), Siemens (39 percent) and Becton Dickinson (37 percent) rounded out the top five.

The report also uses Johnson & Johnson’s Earthwards portfolio of environmentally conscious health-care and pharmaceutical products as a case study. To be Earthwards-recognized, a product must achieve a greater than 10 percent improvement in at least three of seven areas: materials used, packaging, energy, waste, water, social benefit and innovation. The company has 33 Earthwards products to day; its goal is 60 products by 2015.

For example, Ortho Clinical Diagnostics, a Johnson & Johnson company, launched a new generation of its VITROS 3600 Immunodiagnostic System, which runs clinical blood tests in hospital labs. The new system is Earthwards-recognized; VITROS 3600 uses on-board electronic documentation, which reduced paper use by 15 percent, cut energy use by 13 percent and liquid waste generated during use by 80 percent, all compared to the previous-generation product, according to the report.

Last month, Johnson & Johnson said it will remove a number of potentially harmful chemicals, including formaldehyde, from its line of adult consumer products by the end of 2015.