Sustainability at the Healthcare Organizations: an Analysis of the Impact on the Environment, Society, and Economy

Terms like sustainability, transparent management, respect for the environment, and social responsibility are concepts that each day gain more importance in the business scenario, which is becoming not anymore just about financial aspects. The business of the healthcare organizations generates a large impact on the society by three dimensions: economical, environmental, and social. Sustainability and these three dimensions must be defined in the organization's policy and its strategic planning; the senior managers should be directly involved in the processes. These processes should be worked during the day to day actions and not just be a matter of marketing. The organization should clearly define how this policy will direct the processes guidelines, and actions for that. From this perspective the objective of this research is to analyze the amount of Brazilian healthcare organizations that have defined the three guidelines of sustainability in their policies and their strategic planning. The methodology used is descriptive. In the main results from the data collected from the websites, few health organizations mentioned the term sustainability and, when they mentioned the term, they mentioned it in a superficial way, which does not focus on the triple bottom line.