Telehealth Can Greatly Reduce Carbon Footprint

Since the pandemic, telehealth has become an important tool for care delivery and one that commercial real estate needs to consider. But it could also be an important way for health-related CRE to reduce carbon emissions, according to a recent study in JAMA Oncology.

In general, telehealth can have a large and positive impact on CRE in terms of service delivery. Behavioral health provides an example. Between 2019 and 2022, telehealth visits increased by 1019.3% (about ten-fold). But in-person visits increased 2.2% each month, growing to 79.9% of pre-pandemic levels. Overall, mental health utilization was 38.8% higher than before the pandemic. Telehealth can help create efficiencies.

But another way CRE can benefit from telehealth is through greenhouse gas emission reduction, as a study in JAMA Oncology explains.

“In this cohort study including 123 890 patients seen over 1.6 million visit days, compared with an in-person–preferred care model, a telemedicine preferred–care model reduced per–visit day emissions by 81.3%,” the report said. “In a national counterfactual model comparing usual vs decentralized care (telemedicine as well as local site care when possible), there was a 33.1% reduction in emissions, which corresponded to an annual emissions reduction of 75.3 million kilograms of CO2 equivalents, or 15.0 to 47.7 disability-adjusted life-years.”

“Tele-medical and decentralized cancer care does provide a large relative reduction in emissions,” lead author Dr. Andrew Hantel, a Dana-Farber Cancer Institute oncologist, told NPR. “It’s potentially a gain downstream for human health and planetary health.”

Granted, this study covered a specific area of oncology, but the results should be enough to encourage further exploration into how healthcare performance can be improved in many ways.

From a CRE perspective, this could also help give property owners new ways to reduce carbon emissions to meet current or future obligations to regulators and investors.