The hospital is the first in-patient health care facility in the United States to achieve a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for Healthcare Gold Certification.

Methodist Olive Branch is also one of six LEED for Healthcare certified facilities in the world and one of only three in the U.S. The LEED for Healthcare certification is a new designation that began in January 2012. It was developed to encourage increased performance criteria specific to hospitals.

“It is important that we take responsibility in how we utilize the resources that have been entrusted to us,” said David Baytos, CEO for Methodist Olive Branch Hospital, in a release. “By building responsibly, we are helping to ensure a healthy world for our children and future generations to come.”

To earn LEED certification, companies must complete the USGBC’s (U.S. Green Building Council) third-party review process that examines five green design categories: sustainable site, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environment quality.

Methodist partnered with engineering and LEED consultants at Smith Seckman Reid, architects at Gresham, Smith and Partners, and Turner Construction to achieve LEED certification for Olive Branch.

Some of the sustainable measures Methodist-Olive Branch used include geothermal heat pumps that use the ground as a heat sink to cool and heat the hospital, and Dynamic Glass that gets darker as the sun shines on it, allowing light in and at the same time reducing heat, ultraviolet light and glare.

The hospital says at least 80 percent of all construction waste was diverted from landfills and sent to recycling facilities, while a large percentage of materials used for construction were made of recycled materials and building materials sourced from within a 500-mile radius of the hospital.

Opened in August of 2013, Methodist-Olive Branch is the newest hospital in the Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare system. The five-story, 100-bed hospital at Bethel Road and Highway 78 cost $137 million to build and offers general and minimally invasive surgery, emergency services, orthopedics, maternity, cardiology and cancer care, among others services.