Hospitals will soon have an opportunity to get their climate-conservation efforts formally recognized by U.S. healthcare’s largest body for setting standards and awarding accreditations.

The organization is the Joint Commission, or JC, which unveiled its new Sustainable Healthcare Certification program Monday.

The JC stresses that participation will be 100% voluntary. 

The program will be open to hospitals that are not JC-accredited as well as those that are. It will reward achievements in, specifically, “decarbonization” performance. And it will begin accepting applications on Jan. 1, 2024.

From the organization’s announcement:

Healthcare organizations that prioritize sustainability gain meaningful, lasting benefits such as cost savings, operating efficiencies, staff recruitment and retention, and potential payments and tax credits through recent federal incentives. Decarbonization also is an imperative for improving healthcare equity and patient safety, as the individuals least able to compensate for the effects of the climate are already burdened with adverse social determinants of health.

To this the Joint Commission’s president and CEO, Jonathan Perlin, MD, PhD, adds that the point of the new program is to galvanize hospitals’ wide and varied save-the-planet measures such that they “collectively reduce the healthcare sector’s carbon footprint and reduce hospital visits, illnesses, premature deaths and medical costs from severe weather events and other climate impacts.”

The JC has opened a dedicated website, the Sustainable Healthcare Resource Center, which is geared to assist hospitals that want to participate in the new program.

It has also posted a pre-application form to fill out ahead of the application go-live on New Year’s Day.

Announcement here, resource center here, pre-application form here.