A modern large scale accredited healthcare laundry will generally have
from
15 to 30 different soilsort categories .
These can be broken down into “ bulk ” linens , “ specialty ” items , and nonlinen items .
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OR towel is mis-sorted into the bath blankets . The bath blanket wash formula is now inadequate to thoroughly clean the surgical OR towel . Now there is a high probability that the entire load of bath blankets will be contaminated by the one mis-sorted surgical OR towel . If this is not discovered by the laundry finishers , there is a reasonable chance that a contaminated load of bath blankets will make their way to the hospital and the load of blankets may end up touching sick patients !
Let ’ s look at another mis-sort quality consequence . Suppose a plastic bag of food waste makes its way into the soiled laundry and is not sorted out . Let ’ s imagine this bag makes its way into a wash load of incontinence pads . Pads normally require a strong wash formula since they are heavy soil . Let ’ s assume they are washed in a tunnel washer and make their way to the extraction press . The now clean pads and plastic bag are pressed under pressure and the bag explodes ! The entire incontinence pads load is now contaminated ! If this is not discovered by the laundry , then these dirty pads will be used in patient care .
Let ’ s examine one final example . Reusable microfiber products for cleaning require a heavy soil extended formula . Often terry items such as washcloths will be mis-sorted into the microfiber bins . Since terry items have a high cotton blend , if they are washed with microfibers , they will break down and shed lint . Microfiber has such as high positive charge that it will attract and trap the cotton fibers resulting in microfiber cleaning products that are contaminated with cotton fibers and thus not as effective .
Production
A high-performance healthcare laundry operation must produce high quality hygienically clean healthcare textiles cost competitively . Just like with software engineering , larger investments in the early parts of the process yield successively larger dividends downstream . The impact of errors in the early part of the process increases exponentially the farther downstream they are discovered . In most healthcare laundries there are more than five times as many downstream production workers as there are soil sorters . That means , at a minimum , the impact of activities in the sort will be more than five times as great in downstream production . And that is just in the laundry . When the linen reaches the hospital , the impacts of errors rise by an additional order of magnitude . Below are some additional real-world scenarios , which illustrate this :
➊ Flat Sheets Sort Error : An employee on the soil sort line is responsible for sorting flat sheets into a bin . He is in a rush and mistakenly mixes several washcloths and towels into the bin for sheets . The sheets are transported to the ironer line . The team feeding the ironers now must stop their sheet feeding and sort out these towels and washcloths . Now they are contaminated so they must go right back to the sort to be sorted and washed again . This error , which could have been avoided in a few seconds , ends up costing the laundry several orders of magnitude more to fix .
➋ Scrubs Sort Error : Scrubs must not only be sorted correctly , but pockets much be checked for foreign items such as ink pens , which are common in scrub pockets . If a pen is missed in a scrub pocket , the result is expensive and chaotic . By the time the load reaches the dryer , the ink will likely spill on the other scrubs and ruin the entire load of scrubs . Now one missed task in one day , that takes less than 5 seconds , will result in a financial loss of more than $ 1,500 .
➌ Blanket Sort Error : As stated above , bath blankets are normally washed on a shorter light soil formula . A sorter misses some heavily soiled surgical towels and mistakenly the are sorted into the bath blanket bin . These enter the wash and are washed on a light soil formula . Because of the heavily soiled surgical towels , the wash is inadequate to clean the surgical towels and the bath blankets since they are now heavily soiled too . The blankets make their way to the finish where they are fed , folded , and loaded onto a cart . The cart is taken to the hospital where the contaminated blankets may be in contact with an immune compromised patient . From this example , it is apparent that an error in the sort may have severe health and safety as well as financial consequences .
As with any complex software engineering project , the first step in establishing a high-quality healthcare laundry process is to focus resources to get the upstream correct . Invest the time and resources to develop an accurate high functioning sort operation . The few extra seconds is takes employees to sort items accurately will pay exponential dividends in the safety , quality , and productivity of your healthcare laundry operation . More importantly , these relatively small investments will pay immeasurable gains downstream ultimately in infection prevention and patient safety .
Gregory Gicewicz is distinguished in the reusable textile industry as a tireless advocate for increasing awareness of the significant role that having high standards in the processing of healthcare laundry plays in broader infection prevention strategy . He is president and CEO of Sterile Surgical Systems , a full-service accredited healthcare laundry and reusable sterile surgical textile pack manufacturer . He is past president of the Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council ( HLAC ), currently serves as HLAC inspection committee chair , and led a committee that developed the HLAC Laundry Process Monitoring Toolkit .
www . healthcarehygienemagazine . com • june 2021
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