This paper presents an Australian perspective of the cost benefits of indoor environment quality initiatives drawn from a project analysing the cost benefits of building more sustainable hospitals. In particular, it presents the findings of a literature review undertaken as part of a wider project analysing the costs and benefits associated with application of the Green Building Council of Australia's Green Star Healthcare v1 environmental rating tool to an example hospital for the Australian State Government health departments of Victoria, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory. Following this detailed literature review, analysis determined conservatively that savings in excess of 5% of employee costs are possible from productivity improvements alone due to improved indoor environment quality. This does not include the benefits to patients and visitors, for which quantifiable evidence was not found at the time of the literature review.