Sustainable Strategies for Rural Hospitals

Objectives: Enviromental sustainability in connection with the climate change have become a topical issue in strategic planning also at the rural hospitals. The aim of this study is to investigate the contemporary and unique challenges of rural hospitals in becoming more sustainable to better understand the gaps and unexploited aspects of sustainability in strategic planning and rural hospitals.
Current study has been made within the fundamental and applied research (GreenCare project Nr. Lzp-2023/1-034) that aims to develop an environmentally sustainable and socially responsible business model for public sector hospitals.
Limitations: A limitation of the study comes from the fact that, in the development of the sustainable strategy in the context of green transition, research does not cover the whole process of the sustainable strategy development but rather provides the guidance for hospital managers how to set and select the priorities for green transition.
Materials and Methods: A literature search was performed to gain the latest research results in Scopus, Web of Science, ScienceDirect/Elsevier, and Google Scholar to retrieve studies on:
(1) sustainable strategies for rural healthcare;
(2) measures of sustainable environmental strategies in the healthcare sector.
Results: The results of the study show that that there are gaps and unexploited aspects of sustainability in strategic planning and operation of rural hospitals. During the past ten years, understanding of the significance of sustainability within the context of strategic planning (management) has increased. In nowadays, healthcare professionals, leaders and organisations understand the importance of the sustainale strategies as a scientific discipline that can produce knowledge to redesign business models and processes at rural hospitals and improve medical care and patient satisfaction. There have been studies conducted in Latvia on the importance of sustainable management in healthcare, however there are only few studies on the integration of sustainability factors in the overal strategic and operational management of healthcare organisations and rural hospitals in particular. Therefore, the GreenCare project research focuses on the need to integrate sustainability factors into strategic management in healthcare organisations of Latvia.
Conclusions: Rural hospitals face challenges in becoming more environmentally sustainable, but with strategic management, collaboration, educating leadership and using funding opportunities, rural hospitals can overcome above obstacles. By adopting environmental initiatives and leveraging available resources, rural hospitals can enhance their resilience and environmental stewardship.
The study has important implications for practice and research as it increases understanding of the framework of the environmental sustainability in healthcare as well as shows the importance of the leadership in sustainability management.
Next steps: Next steps are to uncover perceptions, practices and behaviour related to green transition in healthcare and elaborate policy recommendations for a pilot project.