CHICAGO — Linen has a curious habit of disappearing from healthcare facilities.
Patients walk out the door with linens. Hospital staff throw away what they believe to be unwashable goods. Ambulances drive away with loads of linens owned by different facilities.
Whatever the reason, these disappearing healthcare textiles could lead to shortages of necessary linens—and it certainly results in higher costs for facilities and laundries.
American Laundry News contacted three healthcare laundry/textile experts—Nathan Rivers, environmental protection specialist at Bay Pines VA Medical Center in Bay Pines, Fla.; Nicole Grubich, executive director of West Michigan Shared Hospital Laundry in Grand Rapids, Mich.; and Seth Gershman, director of marketing and communications for Unitex Textile Rental Services in New York—to learn some of their top tips for avoiding linen loss at healthcare facilities.
RFID TAGS
Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are small electronic devices that can be placed in linens that provide a unique identifier for the product. Using the system (tags and scanners), healthcare facilities can better keep track of where linens are in the building.
“If funds allow it and the ROI dictates that using an RFID tag system would benefit the laundry from losing linen, then this is certainly something to look at,” says Rivers.
LOGOS
A logo, whether it’s from the hospital or the company providing the linen, can be a deterrent for textiles to “leave” a healthcare facility.
“If there is a big logo on linen stating where the linen is from, then customers and patients may not be so inclined to walk out the door with them,” says Rivers.
BAR-CODE DISTRIBUTION CARTS
The usage of bar codes on distribution carts goes along the same lines as RFID.
“If you know where you sent a cart, and the information that goes along with scanning the cart, then it can help narrow down an issue of where your linen is/was,” Rivers says.
STRATEGICALLY PLACE LINEN
Call this tip “removing temptation.”
A healthcare facility can make sure to not place the more expensive linen in areas where it may not be deemed necessary or in areas where high linen loss is possible, such as the emergency department, in-patient wards, the operating room, etc., according to Rivers.
He also suggests that off-site laundries might be able to work on linen placement with the healthcare facilities they service.
LINEN-DISPENSING MACHINES
Utilizing linen-dispensing machines can limit the amount of linen that one employee can pull from the dispensing unit at once—especially the machines that dispense scrubs.
There are also dispensing machines that will tell the personnel receiving the linen how much that linen costs to put into that machine, which hopefully makes the person conscious of the fact that the linen is technically not free, Rivers says.
LINEN COMMITTEES
Linen committees allow the relevant stakeholders to come together periodically, usually once per quarter, to discuss issues with linen. Linen loss would certainly be one of the standing agenda items.
“At several big systems, I work directly with the marketing departments to do some co-branding of pieces where we’ll have our message and the hospital logo and messages on the same pieces,” Gershman says. “The hospital will then circulate it internally, or use the local intranet to circulate slides on what we’re working on.”
MOU/CONTRACT WITH AMBULANCE COMPANY
Ambulance drivers can be one of the biggest culprits of linen loss out of the emergency department, as they will need linen to ensure a patient is taken care of during transport.
Rivers suggests creating a memorandum of understanding (MOU) or contract (informal or formal) that states that the ambulance will provide replacement linen or bring linen back when they return.
“You could also purchase disposable linens for this very situation or provide a shelf with your less expensive linen to provide,” says Rivers.
ACCURATE PAR LEVELS FOR DISTRIBUTION SHELVES
Rivers suggest that healthcare facilities and laundries take the time to do a linen study in order to create par levels.
“If a facility has the right amount of linen, then there will be less to no linen that can be lost,” he says.
PRICING
Sometimes, it takes a pinch in the pocketbook to get a healthcare facility’s attention when it comes to disappearing linen.
“Setting linen replacement rates high enough that the hospital feels the pain of losing linen, that gets them engaged in helping to prevent it,” says Grubich.
Gershman agrees. “When bills reach six figures for lost linen, then [administrations] start really taking notice, and we’ve been able to help with the education process.”
EDUCATION
The last three tips all fall under the “education” umbrella, which is the most suggested strategy from the experts.
Overall linen use and loss education is vital because often the end-users have a complete lack of understanding, whether it’s about proper usage or that the textile is rented, if an outside source is used, according to Gershman.
In the case of rental, the product is owned by a textile rental company, and the users don’t understand that the cost to replace the item is significantly more than it is to rent the item.
Rivers says that if a customer will allow it, take the time to meet with their key stakeholders in regards to linen use and possible abuse to educate them on the importance of taking care of the linen and ensuring that it gets back to the laundry plant.
“Buy-in is huge in all of these things by the customer,” Rivers says.
Also along the lines of education is taking the time to educate the healthcare facility’s laundry distribution staff, he adds. Make sure they understand the correct ways to distribute the linen and also the importance of getting the linen back to the laundry plant.
“You need to have a strong linen utilization policy in place,” says Grubich.
Rivers adds, “These personnel can be your boots on the ground in a facility where you are not at all the time.”
REUSABLE MEANS REUSABLE
Many customers do not realize the power of an industrial laundry system in regards to getting out stains. Therefore, many linens just get thrown away—in particular, usage by housekeeping and nursing staff—when they get “too soiled” by body fluids, says Rivers. A big component of the education process is to reinforce that employees should not throw away dirty linen.
ENGAGE CUSTOMERS IN LINEN PROCESS
While a linen committee helps with utilization on the patient floor, it’s beneficial for healthcare facility officials to visit the laundry, according to Rivers.
“Write into your contracts that the customer must come and visit the laundry plant at least once a year, more would be recommended, so that they understand the full process of what it takes to put that linen where it needs to be in the end,” he suggests.
The hope is to create a partnership between distributor and customer that will trickle down to everyone in the customer’s system to understand that the linens just don’t magically appear on their shelves.
To go along with this, the laundry plant, if possible, should investigate linen loss and try to nail down specific areas of high linen loss. Once diagnosed, any number of the described steps could work to remedy the issue.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].