ASHE seeks respondents on energy use survey

The Sept. 17 deadline is drawing near for health care facilities to complete an energy survey being conducted by the American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) that serves two objectives.

The survey's goal is to produce the latest hospital energy-use data, and it also can prevent the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from ditching its Energy Star rating system for hospitals.

Clark Reed, director of the Healthcare Facilities Division for the EPA's Energy Star, explained during a webinar last month that EPA may discontinue the Energy Star health care rating because the agency is concerned that data from the 1997 energy survey may be outdated. The algorithm used to create the acute care hospital ratings is based on hospital energy data from that survey.

Health care facility managers are urged to go to the ASHE website and complete the survey by the deadline to preserve the Energy Star hospital rating. The link to the survey is www.ashe.org/projects/energysurvey.html.

Reed said ASHE had collected about 80 surveys as of Aug. 4 but needs at least 350 to get a valid sample. ASHE will share the survey results anonymously with EPA. For questions, send an e-mail to ASHEenergy@aha.org.