Methodological guide for assessing GHG emissions for healthcare pathways: why and how?

The decarbonization of patients care therefore requires the adoption of a global vision of the healthcare system.
 

In this context, the care pathway constitutes a relevant scope of analysis. It describes, in a continuous and structured manner, all the stages of a patient's care, from the first resort to any follow-up phases, including all the places of care concerned (consultations, emergencies, hospitalization, follow-up care, home care, medico-social).

In this guide, we consider that care pathways can be broken down into a mesh of "elementary bricks" of healthcare (e.g. consultation, imaging, biology, surgery, etc.), juxtaposed to create a global care pathway. In the rest of the report, we will refer to them as "building blocks" or "carbon footprints of medical acts". They are thus the basic elements on the basis of which a journey can be analysed, compared or optimised.

The long-term objectives of this guide are:
● provide a clear and reproducible methodology for assessing the carbon footprint of a
care pathway;
● to constitute a public database of emission factors associated with the basic building
blocks of care pathways;
● to provide a robust methodology for the construction of new building blocks;
● to provide an analysis grid to describe the quality of (future) studies on the carbon
footprint of a basic building block (act of care) or a care pathway,
● to help adopt a rigorous and adapted methodology for comparing care pathways or
scenarios.