Outsourcing To A Hospital Laundry Service Makes Fiscal And Environmental Sense

There is an essential and costly line item in the healthcare industry that can be easily overlooked at first when considering the overall budget and that is linen management. Textiles from patient gowns, bed linens, lab coats, and surgical items compose a significant fiscal and environmental impact on hospitals, clinics, and even private practices. According to the 2005 Comparative Operating Revenues and Expense Profile for the Healthcare Textile Maintenance Industry, over 2 million pounds of laundry annually is generated by a typical 300 bed hospital, using 21 to 22 pounds of textiles each day for each patient.

Hospitals and other healthcare facilities that try to contain laundry expenses by using disposables face other problems. One is the enormous amount of waste generated that necessarily ends up in already over-stretched landfills. Also, some contaminated disposables must be handled as medical waste that is regulated requiring additional cost for disposal and an increased environmental impact. When all costs for disposables are considered, including the disposal and environmental costs and the need for added storage space that could be used for other purposes, the cost can be as much as twice that of using reusable textiles.

Additionally, an ANSI and AAMI study has shown that reusable surgical drapes and gowns provide a 70% added barrier protection over disposables helping to protect patients and staff from the ever growing problem of infection. Patient satisfaction is another important consideration. Patients, physicians, and nurses prefer the texture of linen items over course paper disposables. Linen items offer a more professional, patient-centered image to the healthcare facility.

Outsourcing hospital laundry to a commercial laundry service is a wise fiscal choice for most facilities over trying to do it with an in-house laundry. Rising costs in laundry operation resources including natural gas, water, and sewer rates as well as rising chemical expenses make running a laundry more expensive today without even considering labor expenses. Commercial laundry service companies have been able to upgrade to innovative and efficient laundry equipment to largely offset many of these increasing costs. Upgrading equipment is cost prohibitive to many healthcare facilities making outsourcing the service a more economical choice for both the immediate and long term.

When considering the benefits, both fiscal and environmental, of using reusable textiles over disposables and the cost benefits of outsourcing hospital laundry to save on equipment, resource, and labor costs, it simply makes sense to take advantage of a commercial laundry service.