A framework for measuring sustainability in healthcare systems

The purpose of this paper is to identify sustainability factors in the healthcare sector, introduce a hierarchical framework for the sustainability factors, and prioritize the importance of the sustainability factors and sub-factors. Measuring sustainability in healthcare systems is a complex and unstructured issue that involves many criteria and sub-criteria, requiring the issue to be deconstructed into a set of components organized into a multi-level hierarchical form. Analytical hierarchical process (AHP) methodology is used to manage the complexity of multi-criteria decision-making processes. Data were collected from five large hospitals in Abu Dhabi, which is the largest Emirate of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The AHP framework used in this study resulted in a ranking of 31 sustainability sub-factors based on evaluations by experienced healthcare professionals. This work contributes to continuing research on sustainability, giving practitioners and designers a practical means to measure and implement sustainability factors in health organizations. Through successive stages of data collection, measurement analysis, and refinement, the contribution of this research is a reliable and valid framework that can be used to conceptualize and prioritize sustainability strategies in healthcare management.