Healthcare Hygiene magazine October 2019 | Page 39

healthcare textiles/laundry
By Greg Gicewicz
The Modern Healthcare Laundry Will Shoot for
the Moon
T
his past July marked the 50th anniversary of the first
humans landing on the moon as part of NASA’s Apollo
lunar mission. Now, NASA is going back to the moon, but it’s
not doing it alone. Last May, the space agency announced
its commercial partners in the first phase of its Artemis pro-
gram to deliver cargo and scientific instruments to the lunar
surface in the next few years to support human landings and
habitation by the mid-2020s.
In choosing its partners, a NASA spokesperson said, “The
companies we have selected represent a diverse community
of exciting small American companies, each with their own
unique, innovative approach to getting to the Moon.”
I can relate to this, as I’m the owner/operator of a healthcare
laundry in the greater Seattle area. As such, my company
partners with more than 30 acute-care hospitals and surgical
centers to annually deliver 10 million pounds of processed,
hygienically safe reusable healthcare textiles (HCTs).
Just as NASA has realized that getting to the moon is no
longer a do-it-alone mission, leading hospitals have recognized
the role that partners have in their respective successes. And
nowhere is this more evident than in their mission to eradicate
themselves from the reality of healthcare-associated infections
(HAIs), a situation that has reached epidemic proportions.
Where once the selection of a healthcare laundry was a
mere decision of choosing the lowest-cost provider, respon-
sible hospitals are now carefully vetting their laundries. What
are the laundry’s standards for ensuring infection prevention
and patient safety? Do their standards cover the complete
textile-processing cycle: from handling and transporting soiled
healthcare textiles, to in-plant processing and delivery back
to the customer? Do their standards include strict adherence
to federal government regulations and guidelines?
And what about innovation? Indeed, in today’s mar-
ketplace, the modern healthcare laundry must be able to
demonstrate how it has evolved to better align innovation
with a hospital’s infection prevention strategy.
A case in point: innovation in process monitoring. Process
monitoring refers to how laundry operators can continually
know how well their processes are performing and whether
their standards are on target as originally intended.
It used to be that a laundry would establish a baseline
of processing standards, followed by documented staff
training, and finally proof that the policy was being executed.
Monitoring was typically provided in the form of checklists
or visual cues, e.g., the carts look clean þ ; the surfaces
look clean þ ; the hands look clean þ ; the air looks clean
þ ; the linen looks clean þ . The obvious flaw here is that
there has never been a way to measure these “checks”
with quantifiable data.
That is, until now. A recently introduced innovation in
www.healthcarehygienemagazine.com • october 2019
laundry testing and process analysis is enabling laundry op-
erators to recover the most accurate representation of viable
organisms (bioburden) on healthcare textiles; and quantifying
the sources of potential environmental contamination on
textiles that are known to come from air, hands, hard surfaces
and in water systems.
Here are the five specific testing areas that compose this
next generation of process monitoring:
 Surface sampling analysis: Monitoring surface clean-
liness prevents contamination of clean products that contact
surfaces during finishing, transporting, packaging and storing.
 Air sampling analysis: Air sampling analysis provides
Total Aerobic Microbial Counts (TAMC).
 Linen analysis: Bioburden testing provides microbial
contamination counts measuring the textile provider’s ability
to achieve and maintain a state of cleanliness in their products.
Products sampled are cotton, polyester and blends, repre-
sentative of the highest volume materials being processed.
 Water analysis: Water sampling enables the laun-
dry to identify specific areas of concern such as points of
suspected contamination, or to determine if a problem has
been corrected.
 Hand hygiene analysis: Practicing hand hygiene is an
effective way to prevent cross-contamination and infection.
This test is designed to measure handwashing practices, not
individuals. Samples are blind-coded to assure the anonymity
of participants. Testing includes pre- and post-wash; a glove
test; and a swab test.
The high-level of data that come from these tests enable
the laundry to adjust accordingly its processes to improve
overall plant hygiene, which helps to ensure the safety of those
HCTs that contac hospital patients. This includes data for:
• Evaluating before and after conditions of cleaning
processes
• Isolating problem areas
• Measuring the effects of process modifications and/or
system improvements
• Trending over time
I served on a team that helped in the development of
this new approach and I can attest to the fact that it’s vastly
different in scale from anything else currently available in
the industry. It’s a “giant leap,” if you will, that enables
operators to demonstrate to their healthcare partners their
commitment to quality and patient safety. If you consider
yourself a modern healthcare laundry, maybe you should
be shooting for the moon.
Gregory Gicewicz is president of Sterile Surgical Systems
and past-president of the Healthcare Laundry Accreditation
Council (HLAC).
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