Driving Change Together: OhioHealth and Community Partners Promote Sustainable Transit

Last week, OhioHealth partnered with Smart Columbus, SPIN and COTA to host an event at the OhioHealth David P. Blom Administrative Campus aimed at educating associates on the value of sustainable transportation solutions.

The OhioHealth sustainability team, together with the fleet and logistics team, showcased electric transportation options including scooters, bikes and vehicles. Public transportation was also highlighted, through a collaboration with COTA, showing how associates can make use of the city’s transit system.

The event gave all associates the chance to explore innovative ways to drive the future of transportation.

“A big part of our mission at OhioHealth is to provide our patients, visitors, associates, and physicians access to electric vehicle charging infrastructure to enable them to use different modes of transportation including hybrid and electric vehicles to contribute towards the reduction of GHG emissions in our community,” Casey Sattler, OhioHealth director of supply chain logistics said.

“It’s important to educate everybody on the different options that we have where we’re not running shuttles or cars,” Terri Scannell, OhioHealth principal advisor sustainability, said. “There’s a lot of opportunities at OhioHealth to raise awareness on sustainability efforts, and this event not only showed how we can cut costs, but how we can work together to cuts GHG emissions.”

Scannell emphasized the importance of broadening awareness around alternative transportation.

“In the last two years, we’ve had more poor air quality days in central Ohio than we’ve had in the last two decades combined,” said Scannell. “OhioHealth is doing its best to have zero tailpipe emissions any time we move things, whether that’s with our Fleet vehicles, whether that’s with our medical courier routes; the overall goal is to reduce tailpipe emissions and improve health and air quality for the communities we serve.”

She added that OhioHealth is always seeking new ways to reduce its environmental impact across all OhioHealth hospitals and locations.

Last year alone, OhioHealth drove almost 400,000 miles in electric vehicle (EV) vehicles moving critical patient labs, medications, supplies, clinical equipment, and nutritional products across Ohio, all with zero tailpipe emissions: no carbon monoxide.

Making a positive difference for the health of central Ohio is a system-wide effort, with many OhioHealth teams working together.

“The OhioHealth Supply Chain Logistics Transportation and Sustainability teams work closely with our Environmental Social Governance (ESG) and Sustainability partners,” said Sattler. “But also, with our care site clinicians, associates, and leaders to deliver critical patient care supplies and equipment, medications and lab samples, across the system effectively and efficiently without impacting patient care.”  Today, we operate upwards of 20 fully electric vehicles, 4 hybrid cars, and operate 140 EV charging stations.  OhioHealth is proud to be one of the largest operators of EV charging stations in Ohio.

One of OhioHealth’s sustainability partners, SPIN, attended the event for associates. A spokesperson for SPIN shared it has a fleet of up to 2,000 devices in Columbus including e-bike options, seated and standing scooters.

“We really embrace our role as part of the transportation landscape here as an integral last mile connector, complimenting other modes of transit, other bicycle and pedestrian modes and really offering that shared micromobility option that fills in the gaps,” said Jimmy Gilman, head of government partnerships at SPIN. “We really appreciate our community partnerships here in raising awareness and making sure SPIN is available for everybody in the community.”