Environmental Impact Assessment in Healthcare

This assignment explores the role of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) as a crucial tool for evaluating the operational impact of healthcare institutions like St. Joseph Hospital. It delves into three key focus areas: environmental, institutional, and economic aspects. The paper analyzes how EIA helps identify risks associated with construction activities, managerial decisions, and financial management, ultimately contributing to effective risk mitigation and sustainable healthcare delivery.

Running head: HEALTH ASSESSMENT EVALUATION
Environmental Impact Assessment as an Assessment Tool
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1HEALTH ASSESSMENT EVALUATION
St. Joseph is a medical research and education, quality tertiary care provider. The hospital
is nationally recognized. This hospital includes Level 1Trauma Center, University of Arizona
Cancer Center, Center for Women’s Health, Norton Thoracic Center and Barrow Neurological
Center. The hospital also includes the primary care, internal medicine and orthopedic center. The
hospital even ranks among the top hospitals in the US and it is ranked by U.S. News & World
Report. St. Joseph has over 40 branches in Nevada, California, Arizona. The hospital is a
nonprofit hospital and provides support services, social service, and health services (St. Joseph's
Hospital & Medical Center, 2018). This study is based on the evaluation of a health assessment
tool called the Environment Impact Assessment tool for purpose of identification of the
operational impact and the development of the action plan.
Environment Impact Assessment (EIA)- It is a process of mitigation, evaluation,
prediction and identification of the social and the biophysical effects of the proposed
developments and also measuring the impacts of the major decisions made.
The three areas that the EIA evaluates are the environmental (biophysical), institutional
and the economic aspects of an institution. Among the three focus areas, environment is the most
important focus area. The environmental aspects Environment Impact Assessment includes
certain parameters like effect on the environment due to the construction of hospital buildings.
Construction of hospital over a large area including often disturb the local microflora and tend to
interfere with the natural environment. Due to the construction of the large buildings, dust from
the construction sites pollute the environment and hamper the air quality. This, in turn, affects
the lungs of the people residing in the neighboring areas of the construction site. Thus,
identification of these prime issues are the main goals of EIA (Glasson, Therivel & Chadwick,
2013). The second focus area which the Environmental Impact Assessment assesses is an

2HEALTH ASSESSMENT EVALUATION
institutional impact. There can be different types of reasons of institutional impact and this can
affect the management, the employees and the patients in the St. Joseph hospital. Institutional
impact arises from the wrong decisions or hefty decisions taken up by the hospital management.
Thus, the impact of a decision of can is effectively analyzed before the occurrence through the
EIA. The last focus area is the assessment of the economic issues that may arise in the St. Joseph
hospital. The economic impact can be measured by the funds that are being held by the hospital
and how efficiently the hospital authorities are spending. Economic instability may arise due to
inefficient fund management. Organizations often become bankrupt due to thoughtless decisions
are taken and the undertaking ventures that will that can potentially affect the healthcare delivery
to the patients (Glasson, Therivel & Chadwick, 2013).
The role played by each focus area in risk management- considering the environmental
aspect, the risk of construction and its negative impacts on the environment and the health of the
neighboring people are the high rated risks. Identification of these risks can assist construction
companies to follows a different construction strategy that will minimize the spread of the
quantity of dust in the neighboring areas. Impact on the environment is a potential risk and
minimizing the effects of such risk is the prime motive of Environmental Impact Assessment.
Thus, construction of expansion of the branches of St. Joseph hospital might lead to the similar
kinds of risks and the identification of the risks prior to construction is an effective risk
management strategy (Zolfagharian et al., 2012). The second problem arises from the
institutional aspects, sometimes all managerial decisions taken are not well thought and also are
not executed well. Thus, such managerial decisions can be considered as a risk and the prior
identification of such risks can avert a man-made disaster in the St. Joseph hospital. Hefty
managerial decisions not only hinder the normal functioning of a hospital but also hinders the

3HEALTH ASSESSMENT EVALUATION
effective delivery of the healthcare to the patients and prior identification is a risk management
(Labelle & Rouleau, 2017). The third problem is the risk associated with the economic
instabilities occurring within the St. Joseph hospital. Economic instabilities occurring due to the
inefficient fund and capital management can hinder the functioning of the St. Joseph hospital.
The hospital has different departments that provide a wide of range of services to the patients.
Thus, to maintain such a big hospital requires big capital and fund. It is also known that St.
Joseph is a nonprofit hospital and thus in order to manage the hospital, the funds and the capital
of the hospital need to be managed effectively. Risk identification thus also played a key role in
identifying the key problem areas (Santilli & Vogenberg, 2015).
Thus, from the above discussion, it can be concluded that environmental impact assessment is
an important part of health assessment with respect to the St. Joseph hospital. The three
important focus areas identified are the environmental, institutional and the economic aspects.
These aspects thus help the managers of the St. Joseph to identify the risks.

4HEALTH ASSESSMENT EVALUATION
Reference
Glasson, J., Therivel, R., & Chadwick, A. (2013). Introduction to environmental impact
assessment. Routledge.
Labelle, V., & Rouleau, L. (2017). The institutional work of hospital risk managers:
democratizing and professionalizing risk management. Journal of Risk Research, 20(8),
1053-1075.
Santilli, J., & Vogenberg, F. R. (2015). Key Strategic trends that impact healthcare decision-
making and stakeholder roles in the new marketplace. American health & drug benefits,
8(1), 15.
St. Joseph's Hospital & Medical Center. (2018). About Us | St. Joseph's Hospital & Medical
Center | Dignity Health. Dignityhealth.org. Retrieved 24 February 2018, from
https://www.dignityhealth.org/arizona/locations/stjosephs/about-us
Zolfagharian, S., Nourbakhsh, M., Irizarry, J., Ressang, A., & Gheisari, M. (2012).
Environmental impacts assessment on construction sites. In Construction Research
Congress 2012: Construction Challenges in a Flat World (pp. 1750-1759).