Since our founding CareMetx has been deeply committed to ensuring our operations and business practices are not only good for our employees and our organization, but represent the right thing to do. With this commitment in mind, we were founded with the intention to create a remote workforce as we strongly believed such a model would deliver tangible benefits for our teams, our clients, and the environment. As we gradually adopted a remote work arrangement, then accelerated the shift post-pandemic, we’ve seen this model validated in important ways.
The Trickle Effect of Reducing Our Physical Footprint
CareMetx began moving to a remote business model long before the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns necessitated such a shift. This approach allows us to hire the best talent in the business, removing geography as a constraint and enabling us to build the most effective teams for the benefit of the manufacturers, providers, and patients we serve. And when foul weather hits, our teams can stay off the roads and safe while remaining productive. The pandemic proved the value and effectiveness of our model.
Since then, we decided to accelerate our shift to remote work and further reduce our physical presence by consolidating or subleasing space and allowing leases to run out on facilities we no longer needed. In the process, we reduced our Bethesda headquarters space down to fewer floors and decommissioned two call centers, a fulfillment center, and an office in Boston. Now we’re using our remaining physical locations more strategically—for example, deploying our call center and headquarters to get temporary reverification season employees tech-enabled and trained.
In addition to reducing our physical footprint further, these efforts have naturally driven less energy use and a lower carbon footprint. Our continued growth illustrates this model is both good for the planet and good for business—demonstrating we can successfully meet manufacturers’ evolving needs for technology-enabled hub services and patient services programs that improve drug access, adherence, and affordability.
Measuring Our Impact
Though sustainability has come to the forefront more noticeably in recent years, CareMetx has been following eco-friendly policies and practices from our inception. By conducting a comprehensive carbon accounting inventory, we’ve validated what we already knew: CareMetx has a very low carbon footprint relative to the scope of our operations.
CareMetx engaged Persefoni, a climate management and accounting platform, to collect and measure the climate-related data needed to determine our current carbon footprint across the three scopes of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol. Persefoni determined our carbon emission sources and established a baseline that allows us to identify and act on improvement opportunities.
Through this exercise we determined that our global carbon footprint in 2023 was 2,304 tCO2e (tons of carbon dioxide equivalent)—only about the amount of electricity used by 301 homes annually. Since we have no manufacturing operations, CareMetx generated no carbon emissions directly under Scope 1 of the protocol. Our emissions stemmed from the following sources:
In addition to reducing our carbon footprint, reducing our physical footprint enables us to take a pragmatic and efficient approach to delivering our services. This highly practical business model allows us to operate efficiently, directing our resources toward efforts that reduce time to therapy for the patients who rely on specialty medications.
Continuing Our Tradition of Environmental Responsibility
Our remote work model and carbon accounting initiative are both part of a long-standing commitment to environmental stewardship at CareMetx. Our company was an early mover in the shift to paperless processes, committing from day one to reduce paper use and the waste it generates by equipping our teams with digital tools instead. It was a major change for some of our first hires, and one that required retraining, but now it’s an integral part of our culture.
When it’s time to replace office furnishings or equipment, we always focus on the right thing to do both from a practical standpoint and to conserve resources. In 2023 our efforts to reuse, recycle, relocate, or sell these materials diverted 13.4 tons of waste from landfills while putting these items to good use elsewhere. We’re diligent about keeping e-waste out of landfills by upgrading, recycling, or donating computer equipment that has reached the end of its useful life for business purposes at CareMetx, but could be used by other organizations. In the first half of 2024 alone, we donated nearly 500 Chromebooks and 425 computer monitors for use in educational settings, and recycled hundreds of computers and other outdated equipment.
Recycling has also been a major focus at CareMetx since our founding. We started placing recycling receptacles at all office spaces in 2011, no longer purchases plastic water bottles for our facilities since 2019, moved to compostable utensils, plates and cups the same year, and replaced single-use coffee brewing systems in 2021.
Where Sustainability Will Take Us Next
CareMetx will continue to take every measure possible to put our resources to best use...and while we’re at it, reduce our environmental impact. For example, we regularly make conscious decisions to use video conferencing instead of traveling whenever it’s feasible. When we distribute computers and other equipment to remote employees, we work with shipping vendors that are committed to reducing their carbon footprint and engage in reliable and transparent carbon accounting. And now that we have an accurate carbon footprint baseline, we’ll develop Science-based Targets (SBTs), share them with our clients and prospects, and report on our progress toward achieving these critical environmental goals.