Digital innovation government: organizational and energy analysis in Italian hospitals

Abstract

Analyzing the complex structures of 1062 Italian hospitals, the present research aims at evaluating the performance relating to the sustainable energy management. The monitoring activities were carried out both to analyze the building and structural context and to analyze the energy consumption of Italian hospitals during the period 2016-2022. Furthermore, the paper elaborates a comparative analysis the other European countries, highlighting how is possible to improve the energy efficiency of Italian hospitals. The energy analysis concerned the breakdown of electricity consumption, analysis of the consumption of the last six years derived from the monthly bills of hospitals, the consumption now, distribution of electricity consumption, and air conditioning needs; the organizational analysis concerned the plant characteristics of the structure, the age of the building and building maintenance over the last 6 years. In the discussion, possible solutions emerge, operational interventions, to make the energy management of hospitals, more efficient. The presence of different services provided highlight different profiles of energy consumption linked to two main categories: hotel-type consumption for the well-being of patients and staff and consumption more closely related to health functions supported by treatment and diagnosis equipment. In recent years, numerous opportunities for energy upgrading of buildings have not been implemented by creating energy profiles of obsolete and inefficient hospital facilities. In this context, the role of the energy manager and the presence of structures dedicated to energy management emerge as the main bottlenecks for achieving better energy efficiency. After the introduction, the paper elaborates a conceptual background focused on sustainable energy management. The section 3 show the methodology applied, the main results are included in section 4 and the discussion section have been developed in section 5. Finally, the conclusion highlights that the sustainable energy management is an open question and the output of discussion linked to the research suggest that the hospitals' energy efficiency must be seen as under constant development and re-interpretation.