UHN, like most hospitals, is a busy place.  Add to that the vastness of UHN (after 10+ years here, I still get lost) and it’s easy to see how a sheet of paper can fall through the cracks.  Fortunately, in my 10+ years here, and in between bouts of getting lost, we’ve developed a sort of recipe for filling in those cracks with fresh baked sustainability goodness. 

Ingredients:

  • one lab summary report that prints on too many pieces of paper
  • one concerned UHN staff member
  • one Manager of Energy & Environment who many not necessarily know what a lab summary report is, but knows about unnecessary paper use
  • one crack team from the Laboratory Medicine Program who know what a lab summary report is
  • another crack team from the Patient Care Management Systems group who also know what a lab summary report is

 Directions:

  1. Concerned employee notices that lab summary report prints with too many pieces of paper.
  2. Concerned employee contacts Manager of Energy & Environment who many not necessarily know what a lab summary report is, but knows about unnecessary paper use.
  3. Manager of Energy & Environment learns a little about what a lab summary report is and then contacts crack teams from Laboratory Medicine Program and Patient Care Management Systems.
  4. Crack teams get cracking, work their magic and make changes to lab summary reports.
  5. Let bake for a short time while changes work their way through the system.
  6. Remove changes from system, save 438,000 sheets of paper per year.
  7. Close loop with concerned UHN staff member.
  8. Let sit to cool.  Repeat.