Scrubs are a challenge for many medical facilities – but it shouldn’t be. Here are five telltale signs that your scrubs program is being mismanaged by your provider:
- Your Staff is Stashing Scrubs.
If shortages occur, your staff will lose faith in your supplier and start stocking up on their size when they are in stock. This aggravates shortages and may lead other staff to adopt the same stockpiling tactics. Thus, the problem snowballs – and so do your replacement costs.
A properly managed scrubs program will ensure the correct quantities of the correct sizes are delivered each time. When your staff become confident in the supply, they will trust that their size will be available, and stockpiling will decrease.
- Your Staff Wear Their Scrubs Home.
It’s certainly more convenient for staff to be able to wear their scrubs to and from work. Studies show that scrubs that are worn home or worse, laundered there, increase the risk of infection for your staff and your patient. Also, scrubs worn out of your facility have a much higher chance of not making it back into your facility than scrubs that are put on onsite and left in the facility’s hamper when staff leave.
If your staff regularly wear their scrubs into or out of the building, it may be time to change your program.
- You Experience Frequent Shortages.
Whether it’s due to stockpiling for sizes, scrubs left at home, or doctors that wear your scrubs to another facility and change there, if you find that you are frequently running out of scrubs, your scrubs program may be mismanaged.
A well-managed scrub program will offer a way to track your scrubs, showing how many were delivered and how many were picked up – or even better yet, who is taking them home.
- You Get Hit with Unexpected Replacement Charges.
The problem with shortages isn’t just that your staff may end up with ill-fitting clothes; it’s also that your budget may get hit with unexpected replacement charges. Every time a set of scrubs disappears, it will need to be replaced, or your shortages will just worsen.
With a well-managed scrub program, your supplier should be able to evaluate your usage patterns to offer a solution that minimizes the disruption to your day – and your budget – that such shortages represent. This removes the uncertainty from your budget and allows you to allocate your funds more effectively.
- Your Scrubs are Wrinkled, Stained or Poor Quality.
If your scrubs are wrinkled, stained, or of poor quality, then your scrub supplier is not managing your program effectively. Your scrubs should always be high quality, neatly pressed, and free from visible defects. Your scrubs are a physical manifestation of the care that you put into your practice and your patients. As such, you need a partner who will supply you with scrubs that will represent the image you want to convey.
When selecting a partner for your scrubs program, ask what happens when things go wrong. If all you get is a promise to do better next time, or an assurance that it won’t happen again, then the company has no real incentive to keep that promise.
On the other hand, if a healthcare laundry company is offering a money-backed guarantee that promises your scrub program will be managed efficiently, that is a promise that you can take to the bank – literally. That’s a partner who is just as invested as you are in making sure that you have what you need, when you need it.