Background: Since, energy consumption per square meter in hospitals is much higher than other types of service institutions; in this study, some actions performed toward optimizing energy consumption improvement projects based on the definition and prioritization in hospital.
Materials and Methods: The necessity of optimizing energy consumption in hospitals were described according to some scales including the average consumption and cost of water, electricity and gas for bed days and active bed, and these indices calculated in the case. Then, improvement actions were identified using energy audit, interviews with hospital experts and conducted studies in hospitals. Next, projects with high importance were extracted regarding to impact on energy consumption indices, expert opinion, aggregation, feasibility, and limitations such as prerequisite, synchronicity and post-requisite. Finally, specific criteria were identified in three dimensions, i.e., factors affecting the level of energy consumption, trying to execute project and risk and the projects were prioritized using questionnaire and FAHP.
Results: The study results revealed that energy consumption was higher than the world standards in the studied hospital; this confirmed the necessity of optimizing energy consumption and using energy management systems. The results of prioritization also showed the first four priorities.
Conclusion: It seems necessary to save energy consumption through improvement projects implementation in the hospitals. Regarding the number and resources limitation, hospitals can choose to implement some low risk and payback period projects based on existing priority and budget annually.
