Denver Health changes how doctors administer nitrous oxide, saving money, medicine and air quality

Denver Health is changing how its doctors administer nitrous oxide, a common anesthetic used to sedate people for surgeries, after realizing how much was being wasted. In the process, they're saving money and medicine and cutting down on the hospital's carbon emissions.

In an engineering room at the hospital off Bannock Street, Dr. David Abts, an anesthesiologist, is surrounded by tanks of nitrous oxide -- commonly known as laughing gas. It's use as an anesthetic at the hospital is about to undergo a radical change, which hospital leaders say will benefit both patients and the Earth's ozone layer.

Denver Health is removing the tanks used to store it. It will be the first major health system in the state -- and one of the first in the country -- to move away from a centralized tank and delivery system.

The hospital says the change follows the discovery of how much gas was wasted with the current system, its financial cost, and its impact on air quality.

The large tanks in the main hospital were part of a system designed to deliver nitrous oxide throughout the entire building. Moving forward, the gas will only be administered from small bottles.

Doctors told CBS Colorado the decision was made after realizing just how costly and wasteful the tank system had become.

Abts said the carbon emissions of the previous model were equivalent to driving an SUV from Denver to New York City 1,800 times, driving around the Earth's circumference 130 times, or driving to the moon and back 13 times each year. In the last year, they've reduced that waste by about 95%, he said.

"We're losing 90% of the nitrous oxide we buy just through the wall piping systems before it even reaches patients," said Dr. Amanda Deis, a pediatric anesthesiologist at Denver Health. "That's a tremendous amount of greenhouse gas with warming potential that costs the health system money, is bad for the environment, and doesn't help patients at all."

Denver Health says health care accounts for 10% of the U.S. economy's total impact on climate change. Leaders say they're pleased this change will significantly improve the hospital's environmental footprint.

"This is a pretty monumental day," Deis said. "Because we contribute so much to waste in health care, as well as environmental destruction, it's awesome to be part of something so much bigger than myself."