Using an outsource company to clean healthcare uniforms can save health organizations big money
Like most companies, healthcare establishments are always on the lookout for a way to reduce the expenses and improve the efficiencies of their operations. The best approaches are the ones that affect a large portion of the staff so that everyone can help cut costs. One area that has recently drawn a lot of attention is the care and use of healthcare uniforms and medical workwear.
Preventing Infections
Although a lot of facilities focus their efforts on bed linens and other similar textiles, new studies have shown that healthcare uniforms, along with scrubs and other medical workwear, can be a way in which an infection is transported from one patient to another. New strides have been made in improving the barrier performance of these types of clothing with antimicrobial protection; however, these innovations increase costs, so many facilities that launder their own linens, healthcare uniforms and medical workwear cannot take advantage of them.
Turning to a Third Party Source
In order to help with the tasks of cleaning and sanitizing, many companies have begun to outsource the task. A healthcare institution can use up a lot of manpower, electricity, space, and funds in order to handle its laundry needs. The amount of money needed to keep the linens clean and also to provide a unique healthcare uniform, such as a gown, for each patient can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars for a typical hospital. Even for a smaller facility that has less than 100 beds, the average can be over $90,000 per year.
A third-party provider can help alleviate some of the costs and a lot of the burden. Because it is their primary business, it is easier for that third-party provider to stay up-to-date with the latest equipment and chemicals used to launder and protect the items. Moreover, their entire workforce can focus on safely and effectively cleaning medical laundry instead of having multiple layers of employees, some for handling patients and some for handling laundry duties.
One of the top advantages of using an outsourced laundry service is their ability to meet different demands. One health institution may have an ongoing need for multiple types of linen, healthcare uniforms, and even storage mats. If that institution were to do its own laundry, this would mean investing in various types of chemicals, procedures and equipments that would be used simultaneously by the healthcare facility to keep everything properly cleaned. It would also mean that various employees would need to learn how to handle these different types of linen, essentially becoming laundry specialists instead of healthcare providers. On the other hand, one third party provider has the expertise to tackle all of these tasks and leave the healthcare work to the professionals.
Creating Expense Awareness among the Workforce
In an effort to reduce costs even further, some healthcare facilities have begun to educate their employees about ways they can eliminate needless waste. When the employees are not responsible for cleaning and storing the linens and medical workwear, it becomes easy for them to simply toss a sheet into a laundry bin and grab another one for no apparent reason. By alerting everyone to the enormous cost of keeping patient gowns, medical workwear and other healthcare linens properly cleaned, healthcare organizations have found that employees pay more attention to their duties and look for ways to cut out waste.
Larry Chandler is a freelance writer for ImageFIRSTTM Healthcare Laundry Specialists, a company that provides laundry services specifically for health care uniform , medical work wear and hospital scrubs uniform. To find out more about their offerings as well as their services, visit the site Imagefirst.com.
Article Source: Messaggiamo.Com
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