Is Your Medical Laundry Service Certified?

Building and maintaining trust in your facility's operations and its future is as important as the care and recovery of the patients you are treating within it. To keep your hospital or clinic meeting high standards regarding cleanliness and regulations, it is a good idea to have a medical linen and laundry service which has been certified from a third party. This will give your hospital or private practice a competitive advantage over other services that are not and will demonstrate your commitment to protecting your patients and their visitors.

Linens that are regulated will be able to promote and inspire confidence in those whom it matters to the most, since laundry can be a top culprit for harboring disease-inducing bacteria and pathogens. Laundry services do not always do everything they can to help prevent the spread of harmful bacteria, which is why it is always beneficial to use certified professional services.

Benefits of Working with a Certified Hospital Laundry Service

· There is a decrease in the possibility of laundered goods being a source of bacterial infection.

· Certifications are a mark of the mastery of washing, removing wrinkles, drying and ironing, and all of this occurs in the most environmentally friendly manner, leading to extremely hygienic product outputs.

· A laundry service that has taken the trouble to obtain a certification or accreditation usually places a very high importance on quality, customer care and satisfaction.

· You can have peace of mind that always stems from the knowledge that the textile provider chosen is conforming with the best practices for processing healthcare laundry in the industry, including very strict adherence to federal government stipulations, regulations and guidelines.

Certifications and Accreditation

If you are not sure if your current service provider is already certified with a strong third-party certification agency, such as TRSA (Textile Rental Service Association), HLAC (Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council) or with a federal agency, such as OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), you should reach out directly to the company to ask them. And if the service is not certified, do not immediately panic. You can speak to them about any potential future plans for obtaining certification. If all of your questions are not being answered to your satisfaction, do not hesitate to find a new laundry service in your area. Do not compromise the quality of the service you provide your clients, especially when their health is in question.

Two New Certifications Available for Laundry Facilities

Two new certifications recently became available for laundry services.

Hygienically Clean Certification

The first certification is designed specifically for healthcare linen service providers working with hospital garments for the medical profession. This certification will soon be extended to launderers working within the food service industry as well.

Certification Criteria

In order for providers to qualify for the certification, they need to implement minimum standards of hygiene used in hospitals, nursing homes, medical offices and surgical centers. Facilities must also undergo and pass regular bacteriological testing and inspections. Based on the United States Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) 61 Protocol, testing permits only trace levels of bacteria to remain present after laundering, ironing and packing is complete. The pass/fail criteria are a maximum of 20 colony forming units on samples of laundered hospital linen.

Processes and Further Testing

TRSA does not specify any particular laundry process in order to meet the requirements for certification. Instead, the Hygienically Clean program is results-based alone. Provided launderers meet a minimum standard of hygiene to meet the USP 61 Protocol, they can use any cleaning process they wish. The only additional regulation is that launderers document their procedures in a written manual.

On applying for the new certification, a facility will undergo an initial inspection followed by further inspection every three years. Bacteriological testing will be performed once a month for the first three months, and then once every six months on an ongoing basis after that.

The Hygienically Clean program will help launderers meet minimum standards of hygiene to prevent the spread of disease both within the healthcare facilities for which they work and within their own facilities, breaking the cycle of re-infection that plagues many medical practices.

Clean Green Certification

The second new certification concerns laundry facilities that focus their effort on environmentally friendly laundry processes. Certification is available to facilities that meet minimum standards of water and energy conservation and deploy best practices for water reclamation, recycling and reuse of materials.

Certification Criteria

Facilities must document their water management and energy use efficiency and deploy best practices in the following areas:

- Heat recovery and reuse of drained hot water, as well as removal of solid and liquid waste from used water

- Use of environmentally sound detergents

- Recycling of materials

- Energy use, including solar power and energy-efficient lighting

- Preventative maintenance

- Environmentally efficient use of vehicles

Processes and Further Testing

To qualify for the Clean Green certification, laundry facilities must undergo an audit to verify their processes, water use and energy use. Facilities are inspected once every three years to maintain their certification, though if they fail on any point of the criteria, they may be able to earn points toward certification by deploying additional environmentally friendly best practices.

With environmental concerns weighing heavily on both businesses and the public, the Clean Green certification offers laundry facilities an excellent opportunity to prove their excellent environmental records, leading to a boost in brand reputation and the possibility of winning new customers.

How You Can Focus on Making Health Dollars Go Further and Really Make a Difference

The latest round of budget cuts to Victorian hospitals has a major impact on the safety of Patients and nobody wants to take responsibility for the Patients who are missing out on essential health care.

Let's face it. There will always be competition about money, resources and funding in any health system in any country. These fights may be more political in Australia, where the current funding structure with the "fee for service" system isn't really geared for creating choice for Patients and their Families and improving Patients and their Families lives, whilst also looking at cost effectiveness and inefficiencies. The system has been geared towards running and perpetuating inefficiencies. But rather than getting caught up in a political argument, we should be looking at the causes of the disease, fix the underlying issues and look at possible solutions.

I think it's hypocritical to announce budget cuts across Public health services in Victoria- even though by the time you are reading this, the commonwealth government is on the verge of injecting cash back into the Victorian health system- whilst one of the most expensive areas within hospitals is wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars every month to keep long-term ventilated Adults & Children with Tracheostomy in Intensive Care with no Quality of Life and/or Quality of-end-of Life. Some of those Patients have been in Intensive Care for more than 60 days, costing the tax payer up to $ 5,000 per day, not even mentioning that these Patients are blocking beds, that could be used for another Patient and therefore adding on to the long list of Patients waiting for surgery and for a bed in Public Hospitals.( Surgery waiting list 'could hit 65,000', article in 'the age' from the 19/2/2013). There is also the 4 hour rule now, to get Patients out of the Emergency department within less than 4 hours. What if you don't have any beds for an ED Patient needing an ICU bed in the first place? 4 hours won't cut it, maybe not even 4 days...

The current 'fee for service' system discourages thinking outside of the box and does not look at and fix inefficiencies. If health professionals in hospitals were able to spend less time and less resources undertaking tasks that nurses can competently perform in a Client's own home, health professionals time and resources could be devoted to those acutely ill Patients who would benefit the most in Intensive Care. On the other side of the spectrum would be the long-term ventilated Adult or Child with Tracheostomy who can finally leave ICU. Not even mentioning the Families of those long-term ventilated Adults & Children with Tracheostomy, who are putting their lives on hold, while their loved one is in Intensive Care.

Some cases that I see in Intensive Care are kept in ICU for longer than 60 days, usually the only reason keeping them in Intensive Care is the ventilator dependency. Does anybody still think that Intensive Care is the right place for those Patients? What about some long-term ventilated children who stay in Intensive Care for up to 18 months? Does anybody think that a toddler growing up in Intensive Care is funny for the child or for the Family? I certainly don't think it is. How much longer do Patients, Families, health professionals and the health industry want to tolerate those inefficiencies in Intensive Care while at the same time politicians scream out for saving money? Have you tried saving money, by looking at inefficiencies in one of the most expensive areas in a hospital like Intensive Care?

The argument that Quality and safety can only be maintained in a hospital does not cut it. Plenty of other countries have adopted a far more Patient centred health system and approach, with long-term ventilated Adults & Children with Tracheostomy going home as being the norm. Where else would you want to be if given a choice? How much longer do we want to wait to create choice for the very people we care for? Why not making use of a highly skilled critical care nursing workforce and take long-term ventilated Adults & Children out of Intensive Care?

The whole health system is shackled by professional silos that do not encourage thinking outside of the box or encourage innovation. No other industry is so inflexible and bureaucratic like the health industry, with the result that Patient Care is not optimised and not holistic. Any other industry thrives on innovation and as a direct result creates win-win situations and value for their Clients and Customers.

Here is my suggestion. If the Victorian minister of health David Davies, the Victorian department of health with Dr Pradeep Phillip and hospitals are serious about saving money- and I believe they are not- let's start and save money in high cost areas such as Intensive Care, give Quality of life back to long-term ventilated Adults & Children with Tracheostomy and their Families and take them out of Intensive Care. I think that being in Intensive Care for more than 60 days is more than enough. Very few Patients can't go home after 60 days in Intensive Care and some Patients could go home even earlier. So let's get right to the bottom of saving money, work on inefficiencies and also improve people's lives.