Healthcare Hygiene magazine September 2020 September 2020 | Page 35

healthcare textiles & laundry
By Linda McCurdy
As Senior Living Facilities
Weigh Infection Control
Solutions, Laundry
Precautions Must Be Part
of the Discussion
Until there is a vaccine found, those who are battling SARS-
CoV-2/COVID-19 on the front lines must often feel like their
efforts are repetitious and futile. And, arguably, when it comes
to tackling the pandemic, nowhere is this sense of hopelessness
more apparent than in nursing homes, veterans’ homes, assisted
living and similar long-term care facilities, where grim statistics
keep rearing their ugly head.
Just last month, the American Health Care Association and
National Center for Assisted Living (AHCA/NCAL) released a report
that showed COVID-19-related deaths in senior living facilities
had declined significantly but have “started to uptick again in
recent weeks.” Likewise, their report, based on data from the
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), shows that
senior living facilities in the U.S. have experienced an “alarming
spike” in new COVID-19 cases due to community spread among
the general population.
Mark Parkinson, president and CEO of AHCA/NCAL, said this
latest news is “especially troubling since many nursing homes
and other long-term care facilities are still unable to acquire the
personal protective equipment (PPE) and testing they need to
fully combat the virus.”
Consequently, we have a situation where facilities everywhere
are scrambling to find other viable, available safeguards for
the increased protection of the 2 million seniors and 1 million
employees who live and work in these communities.
Infection prevention solutions run the gamut among facilities,
including trying to keep the virus from getting in the door
with checkpoints to screen workers when they arrive; stopping
communal dining; devising in-house solutions to cope with PPE
shortages; establishing internal COVID-19 internal task forces;
and even offering staff financial incentives to live on-site in what
has been called a “closed-off, whole-home quarantine.”
Inexplicably, what’s notably absent in the search for solutions
is any significant discussion of healthcare textiles. Inexplicable,
because the healthcare textile is the one common factor of every
patient’s experience in his or her encounter with a hospital or
senior living facility. Indeed, in virtually every facility, every patient’s
skin will touch a sheet, towel, bed pad, washcloth, bedspread,
blanket; and every employee’s skin will touch scrubs, isolation
gowns, lab coats, and the list goes on.
No one is immune from this, which is why last July the Healthcare
Laundry Accreditation Council (HLAC) issued a warning that
improperly laundered linens can raise the risk of the spread of
infection in senior living facilities and that its – readily available,
already proven – standards provide viable infection control safeguards
to those facilities looking to tackle pandemic challenges
and beyond. HLAC is a nonprofit organization formed 15 years
ago to inspect and accredit laundries processing healthcare textiles
(HCTs) for hospitals, nursing homes, and other healthcare facilities,
including assisted-living establishments.
HLAC-accredited laundries process HCTs based on the highest
standards for patient safety and infection prevention. These HLAC
accreditation standards have been developed based on federal
regulations and guidelines as well as best industry practices. HLAC
accreditation affirms that a laundry organization that processes
HCTs has successfully passed inspection of the following: its facility,
policies and procedures, training programs, and its relationship
with its healthcare customers.
Of relevance to senior living facilities is the HLAC standards
document, “Accreditation Standards for Processing Reusable Textiles
for Use in Healthcare Facilities,” (available to download for free at
www.hlacnet.org). For example, in the broadest of terms, HLAC’s
standards contained in the document can bring to light a myriad
of issues related to healthcare laundries that are most likely not
even on a typical facility’s radar, like the need to maintain functional
separation at all times when processing HCTs. This means ensuring
that clean textiles, ready for patient use, are never in contact with
contamination from soiled textiles, dirty surfaces, dirty air, or even
dirty hands. The document provides different methods (e.g.,
partitioning, signage, hand washing stations) to ensure this in the
physical layout and through maintenance procedures.
Relatedly, soiled textiles need to be sorted into appropriate
wash loads by classification (i.e., color, type of fabric, soil type
or soil load) and/or type of goods. Guidelines such as these are
particularly relevant because there are many levels of soiled textiles
in senior living facilities and they must be washed differently. For
example, one would not want to wash a load of lightly soiled
bedspreads with a bundle of heavily soiled incontinent pads.
These items should be washed in separate loads on separate
wash formulas to ensure that each load is optimally cleaned.
Another example: Wash processes need to be monitored
regularly to verify that they are consistently producing hygienically
clean HCTs. This guideline is particularly relevant to senior living
facilities because they may not have the in-house knowledge,
experience, and equipment necessary to maintain such consistency.
Here, HLAC’s document provides essential guidelines regarding
proper wash temperatures, chemical delivery systems, wash
formulas, and wash equipment.
The message here is that laundry needs to be part of the
discussion as senior living facilities weigh infection prevention
solutions. Where in the past “doing the laundry” may have been
a secondary management matter, in today’s environment it should
be of foremost importance. Facilities that have either on-premise
or outsourced laundries must be cognizant of all the issues like
those aforementioned. A good place to start is to ask the simple
question, “Is our laundry accredited?” Upon inspection, HLAC
accreditation is available to senior-living facilities that launder
on-premise, or for their outsourced laundry. The willingness to
enforce safety measures to produce hygienically clean HCTs will
make all the difference in the world.
Linda McCurdy is president of the Healthcare Laundry
Accreditation Council (HLAC).
www.healthcarehygienemagazine.com • september 2020
35