HOUSTON — Providing linen services for the Memorial Hermann Health System in the Houston area is a monumental task.
The Linen Services team provides essential items — including towels, surgical gowns, scrubs, and even sterile surgery packs — to 14 major hospitals.
Operating six days a week, their behind-the-scenes work ensures surgeons are ready to operate, nurses are equipped to care for patients, and patients remain safe and comfortable.
Earl Smith has been working in the system’s laundry service for more than three decades, and today is director of the entire operation. He and his team of employees work hard at maintaining high standards of quality and ensuring the health system’s facilities always have clean linens in order to be fully operational.
“I’m fortunate that I have a very good team,” he says. “They are very supportive of me, very supportive of the system. Our goal for the system is, this is our laundry. This is for Memorial Hermann, and everything we can do to make a patient comfortable in their stay, we’re going to do it.”
“The importance of our Linen Services team, led by Earl Smith, truly cannot be overstated,” says Malisha Patel, senior vice president and CEO of Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital and Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital.
“While their incredible work often happens behind the scenes, it is fundamental to every aspect of our hospital operations, from infection prevention and patient comfort to the seamless execution of critical medical procedures.”
OPERATIONS
Memorial Hermann Health System’s Linen Services facility is a 60,000-square-foot on-premises laundry (OPL) spread over three floors.
“Our washrooms are composed mainly of Milnor continuous batch washers. We have three of those,” says Smith. “We have five Braun washer-extractors, two Chicago (Dryer Co.) thermal ironers, one Braun thermal ironer and one Chicago steam ironer. And we have a number of Chicago small-piece folders and large-piece folders as well.”
The laundry is on track to produce about 34.5 million pounds this year for the 14 major hospitals in the area. He says most of the accounts are within 65 miles, but there is a small account about 120 miles away.
“We use a dedicated service for our fleet,” says Smith. “We don’t have the maintenance available and the support for a trucking company, so we have a dedicated service. We have seven tractor trailers and about six bobtail trucks that we use to distribute the linen.”
It takes a staff of 175 employees working two shifts a day, Monday through Saturday, to ensure every healthcare facility in the system has the linens it needs.
And it works smoothly because he says the average experience for his laundry managers and supervisors is 30-plus years.
But no one is as experienced as the director of the operation.
A LIFETIME OF LAUNDRY
Smith has been working for Memorial Hermann Linen Services for 33 years but has been in the laundry business in one form or another for 64 years — his entire career.
“I was born into the laundry, I guess you could say,” he shares. “My dad was a new-car salesman, and he got out of the car business and started Shawnee Linen Services in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He contracted the laundry portion of his linen delivery to a laundry, and later, the owner of that laundry sold the laundry to our family.
“I was about 13 years old, and I’d go in and help Dad change bearings on the washing machines and aprons on ironers, that kind of stuff.”
From those days working with his father as a young teen, Smith says he “just developed into the laundry business.”
“Dad taught me the laundry business, but he really didn’t know anything about laundry and we quickly learned,” he says. “Back then, the laundry was doing the old bundle service where they would drive around in a truck and pick up bundles at individual houses, and we would wash and clean their clothes and take it back
to them all wrapped up. We also had a drycleaning unit in our laundry.
“Dad could see that business was going away with polyester coming into the picture. We started getting into commercial business, doing hotels, but focusing more on healthcare laundries and the like. Most of our business was out of Oklahoma City.
“We built our new laundry at Shawnee in the late ’70s. We were running about 15 million pounds of healthcare in that plant. We also had a linen route and uniform rental and other businesses besides the healthcare business. We also did some jeans fading. We got into it just like everyone else.”
The family eventually sold the laundry to Angelica, and Smith stayed with the company for three years.
“After my non-compete was over, I purchased a dry cleaner and was in the drycleaning business for about three years. I got out of that business, and then I was a chemical tech rep for a company that was sold to Ecolab. I worked for Ecolab for a short period of time.
“After that, I went to work for a management company, Medi-Dyn, and worked for them for about 15 years. Then Crothall purchased Medi-Dyn, and I’ve been with Crothall ever since.”
Check back next Tuesday to read about Memorial Hermann Linen Services’ secret to its success.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].
