CAHA has produced a Proposed Standard for Minimising the Health Risks of Climate Change in Healthcare, as part of the review of national health performance standards.
The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care invited CAHA to participate in the national review.
The evidence is clear: climate change poses risks to the safety and quality of patient care. Thus climate change should be included in the risks that need integrated systems of governance, as in Standard 1 of the National Safety and Quality Health Service Standards.
Healthcare standards such as these are needed to ensure healthcare services are adequately prepared to ensure safety and quality of healthcare is not compromised as a result of climate change impacts, and that health services are taking positive steps to reduce their emissions to avoid contributing to the problem, and putting safety and quality even further at risk from increasingly dangerous climate change.
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