It is an ongoing struggle for many Canadian health care organisations to achieve a realistic balance between cleaning and disinfecting to reduce health care acquired infections (HAIs) and other unwanted organisms that can be harmful to patients, staff and visitors, while simultaneously being kind to the environment. They must provide clean and safe treatment and healing environments that are aesthetically pleasing to positively impact the patient experience, yet do so on an ever-shrinking operating budget. In response to these conditions The Ottawa Hospital was incited to get innovative with its purchasing policies and vendor/supplier relationships concerning cleaning and disinfecting products and services. The Ottawa Hospital The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) provides residents of Eastern Ontario with compassionate world-class health care from three bilingual facilities in the national capital area. Combined, the Civic, General and Riverside campuses total in excess of four million square feet of treatment and healing space and house approximately 15,000 health professionals and support staff, making it one of the largest employers in Ontario. In addition, TOH provides educational opportunities across all health care disciplines in partnership with the University of Ottawa and other affiliated universities, community colleges and training organizations. With its size and complexity comes, not unexpectedly, a tremendous demand for hundreds of different cleaning products used for health care treatment, research, maintenance, housekeeping, laundry and elsewhere. In recognition, TOH established a Green Team with members from various organisational departments including engineering and operations, and purchasing, tasking it with a review of purchasing policies and vendor agreements with a goal of advancing towards more sustainable health care practices and establishing a model for other health service providers to emulate. Supplier Relations With a working budget of over $733M, TOH wields tre- mendous leverage within the Canadian cleaning products industry and this has not gone unnoticed by the TOH Green Team which has developed a framework regarding which chemicals it will tolerate in its cleaning products, and the ones it will not. Each must be aerosol, chlorine, fragrance, and allergen-free with a preference for EcoLogo-certified products. Suppliers wishing to have their products considered for use at TOH must show they meet environmental standards as set forth in TOH’s Requests for Proposal (RFPs), in addi- tion to meeting all other relevant criterion applicable to best practices and stringent cleaning protocols. Once selected, suppliers are engaged on an ongoing basis as part of TOH’s continuous improvement process with feedback on products continually gathered from frontline employees, patients and family members. This vital informa- tion helps the organisation identify opportunities for product and operational changes, and is used by management to select the best products possible for cleaning and disinfect- ing efficacy and the safety of staff and patients. Supplier feedback starts with local representatives and may include district managers, research and development staff, and senior executives where necessary. This engagement strategy facilitates the working together of all stakehold- ers to ensure the safest, most innovative and sustainable products are put to use in TOH’s healing environments. The process can, however, sometimes be rather lengthy should it involve reformulations, lab testing, beta testing under ac- tual job conditions, the development of product packaging, assembly, etc. Ultimately, TOH strives to support suppliers/vendors willing to act as both subject matter experts and solution architects, desirous of turning them into “partners for innovation” rather than simply providers of goods. The Ottawa Hospital Purchasing its way to Green Green Best Practice Case Study #3 The Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care is Canada’s premier integrated green health care resource network, a national voice and catalyst for environmental change. www.greenhealthcare.ca