Track: Sustainability and Green Systems

Abstract

As social sustainability is crucial in the contemporary healthcare systems, it is important to indicate the measures that assess the performance of a facility/system from this viewpoint. The literature has not touched this crucial subject so far. Furthermore, due to the abundant thirst for implementing sustainability in the country, it is vital to have a framework to rank a wide range of healthcare facilities in the UAE from a social perspective. The objective of this study is to develop a reliable framework for measuring the extent of impediment (obstruction) for social sustainability among the stakeholders in healthcare facilities in the UAE. The study would be significant for facilities that aspire for achieving or maintaining a higher level of excellence in this sector. A major challenge was to develop a comprehensive questionnaire that features all the barriers among stakeholders. The study, therefore, started with interviews with senior managers in the healthcare facilities in the public sector in the UAE. This exhaustive exercise helped us gather a wide collection of indicators ranging from budget, competition and formalities to government regulations, lack of standards and training/knowledge etc. This helped us find dominant factors that act as barriers for social sustainability, using EFA. The next stage was to investigate and validate the relationship among these dominant factors using CFA.