Electricity: Why doctors say it's critical for your health
Doctors prescribe a lot of things every day, like medications and advice to help their patients feel better. Now some doctors are prescribing electricity to their patients.
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08 Oct 2024
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Doctors prescribe a lot of things every day, like medications and advice to help their patients feel better.
Now some doctors are prescribing electricity to their patients. They believe not having access to reliable power can have a direct impact on the health of their patients.
(upbeat music) More Idaho matters now from the studios of Boise State Public Radio News. I'm Gemma Kaudad. Doctors prescribe a lot of things every day, like medications, as well as advice to help their patients feel better. Well, now some doctors are prescribing electricity to their patients. Yes, you heard that right. They believe not having access to reliable power can have a direct impact on the health of their patients. Dr. Anna Goldman is the medical director of climate and sustainability at Boston Medical Center, which has adopted a clean power prescription program. And she'll be talking about how it works tomorrow as part of St. Luke's lecture series on climate and health. Dr. Goldman, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. I have to say, this is a fascinating program and it is one that you helped put together and it grew out of watching how some of your patients were struggling when they didn't have access to electricity. So first off, can you just talk about that and how electricity does play a part in healthcare? Absolutely. So we have been screening for health-related social needs at Boston Medical Center since 2017. And by health-related social needs, I mean non-medical issues that can really impact someone's health outcomes. Things like food security, housing stability, whether someone has access to transportation, education. And one of the things we screened for is difficulty affording utility bills. And this was something I was seeing commonly in the primary care clinic where I practice I see adults for primary care. And when patients would report this to me, I didn't have a lot I could offer them. In Massachusetts, a provider can provide a letter to patients if they're facing utility disconnection. So if they've fallen so far behind on their payments that they're about to have their service shut off, I can write a letter to the utility that says, please don't disconnect their service. This person has chronic illness. And they will respect that. But it doesn't do anything about the underlying issue, the debt that they're facing, the stress, and it only lasts about three months. And at the same time, I was getting more and more involved in advocacy around climate change and working with other doctors to advance policies to help with the energy transition. And I had just joined a community solar array myself for my own home. And I thought, why aren't our patients getting access to this cleaner and lower cost electricity? They're the ones that need it the most. - So before we get to that part of it, can you tell us a little bit about some of the devices and things that patients need when it comes to access to electricity? Like I'm thinking about like a CPAP machine. - Yeah, exactly. So we prescribe things all the time that require electricity. You mentioned CPAP, so that's a treatment for obstructive sleep apnea. People use it for nebulizers. People have home dialysis machines. They have electric hospital beds, sometimes in their homes, all kinds of medical devices. But electricity is absolutely critical for health, not just because of medical devices. If you think about it, as climate change intensifies, you need electricity in order to run air conditioners. Some people rely on electricity for heat. Many of my patients have reported to me that they have air conditioners, but don't use them because the cost of electricity is so high that they don't run them. And then even keeping things like fresh food, you know, fresh food that's healthy, all needs to be refrigerated for some vegetables. You need a working refrigerator for that. You need lights that turn on so kids can do their homework and people can read their medication bottles. It's just a core aspect of how well someone's going to do, whether they have access to affordable and reliable electricity. - And I would think that this is something, Dr. Goldman, that maybe many of us don't even think about is the connection between health care and electricity. - Yeah, absolutely, but it really is, someone's not gonna do well if they have no electricity, no heat, they're gonna have problems with the temperature and they're gonna have problems just functioning, yeah. - So Boston Medical has solar panels on the roof and it helps provide the hospital with clean power. So this is just, I think, so interesting. So you and I think some other physicians decided to start actually sending some of that power to patients who need it. I mean, frankly, prescribing electricity to patients, can you explain how this program works? - Absolutely, so we have two solar arrays on our campus. The first one does exclusively provide electricity for our operations. That's at our Brockton Behavioral Health Center, which is actually the first net zero psychiatric facility in the nation. So that array is supplying power to that facility. We have a second one that was completed in 2023 on one of our administrative buildings and it was originally designed Boston Medical Center, but when this idea came up of sharing it with our patients, it was reconfigured so that it could actually serve patients instead of the hospital operations. The way it works is that the solar is, it's called a front of the meter design, which means the electricity is produced, it flows through a meter and then the electrons themselves just disperse onto the local power grid. We don't know who exactly uses them, it's whoever is pulling energy off the grid at that moment in that local area. But the utility that we are partnered with, which is called EverSource, and they've been a really key partner. So they measure how much electricity we create using that meter, which they own. And then they provide a credit on our electric bill account for Boston Medical Center. And then we direct them to transfer a portion of that credit directly to the utility bills of our patients. So the patients aren't actually receiving the electrons themselves, they're not seeing the literal power that we're producing, but we are putting more clean, renewable power into the grid, which actually is less expensive to produce than fossil fuel-based power. That's the standard mix on the grid. And then they get a subsidy on their bill from the fact that we are able to produce that cleaner and lower cost power. - So what has been the response from patients who have been able to participate in this program? - People are very excited. I mean, we are, so we're a new program, we're a pilot. We launched in 2023, but we actually had some delays. And so we finished the array, did the finishing touches more recently, actually getting it connected to the grid, that was the last piece. And we're able to do the first transfer only last month in September. So people just are getting their first bills with the credits showing on it. And people are really grateful. It is a new idea, it's a strange idea to them that their hospital is sharing energy with them, but it's a chronic stress for many of our patients and people are grateful to be able to benefit in that way. And many of our patients are concerned about climate change. So it's another way of engaging on that topic and kind of a solutions oriented way of talking about something that's really a chronic threat to all of us. - So I know you mentioned that you're a pilot program, but is this something where other hospitals, like hospitals in our area, if they were to have these solar arrays, be able to do something similar? - Yes, it is a model that can be scaled. And that was one of the reasons why I was interested and excited to explore this model. There's lots and lots of ways that you can do a community solar model, which is essentially what this is. Traditional community solar could be a large warehouse with a solar array or a field covered in solar panels where multiple organizations or households or a mix of those are drawing their power from that solar array. A lot of it depends on local regulation in that state. For example, we are able to transfer a credit very easily from our account to our patient's accounts because that's a state regulation that allows us to do that. Not all states have regulations in place that are conducive to that credit transfer, which really is the core of how community solar works. But there are other ways if you're living in a state that does not have that. For example, a micro grid where you're literally connected to the solar and connecting with neighbors and supplying them with power. There's also virtual power purchase agreements where you can even basically get the credit transferred from out of state. So there's lots of ways to do it. - Well, I want to thank you so much for taking time to speak with us today. I think this is such a fascinating program and I'm looking forward to seeing how it continues. So thank you for your time today with us. Really appreciate it. - It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. - We've been talking with Dr. Anna Goldman, medical director of climate and sustainability at Boston Medical Center, which has adopted a clean power prescription program. And she will be talking about how it works tomorrow as part of St. Luke's lecture series on climate and health. We'll make sure that we put a link to the series on our website, voicestatepublicradio.org. - Thanks so much for listening to Idaho Matters. Boise State Public Radio and Idaho Matters are members of the NPR Network. 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