Advantages of Outsourcing Healthcare Laundry Services
Laundry service is one of the most essential line items in the healthcare industry. It could be quite costly for a healthcare provider in terms of dollars, but also in terms of valuable time.
Recent data reveals the average annual cost of healthcare laundry services in the United States is nearly $497,000, which has increased an average of 1.5% from 2017 to 2021. Compare that to a hospital’s total operating expenses, which typically increase an average of 5% year over year. The hidden cost of maintaining an on-premises laundry at a healthcare facility is in the time and effort of dedicated staff members and the upkeep of purchased laundry equipment.
When you partner with a single trusted healthcare laundry expert that offers a fully-managed laundry program with products and services, you start to see the savings and benefits of having medical laundry and linen outsources. This can be primarly observed through economies of scale and economies of spend through vendor consolidation.
6 Benefits of Outsourcing Medical Laundry & Laundry Services
1. An unwavering focus on infection prevention.
Healthcare laundry service is a specialized type of service unlike those in industrial laundries. Cleanliness must always be top-of-mind in a medical environment where even the smallest amount of contamination could cause life-changing results.
Choose a comprehensive laundry service that guarantees the highest cleanliness standards. Look for a service that follows HLAC (Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council), CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), AORN (The Association of periOperative Registered Nurses), and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) guidelines, one that makes infection prevention a priority. This way, you and your staff can spend less time staying on top of clean laundry and more time caring for those that matter most: your patients.
2. An exceptional patient experience.
Speaking of caring for patients, outsourcing your laundry services means hospital staff members can focus on providing expert medical care and giving patients the best experience possible. They won’t necessarily know how to properly clean, sanitize, and disinfect patient gowns, linens, medical scrubs, or lab coats, but they do know how to help a person feel well again. Finding a laundry service with professional training, years of knowledge, and a focus on improving comfort for your patients can actually help your staff enhance the quality of healthcare visits and time spent in the hospital. Your patients will likely notice, too.
3. Less investment in laundry.
Another advantage of having your healthcare laundry services outsources is you won’t have to spend money on the expensive equipment required for laundering healthcare linens and patient gowns such as industrial-strength washing machines and dryers. Nor will you have the added cost of equipment maintenance or the power required to keep washers and dryers running 24/7/365. Save time with renting vs. buying and avoid finding linen providers and maintaining the right items in stock. Relieve the burdens of staffing challenges, equipment hassles, and more.
4. Improve your staff engagement.
With the right laundry service partner, you won’t have to be concerned whether your doctors and other medical staff will have enough scrubs, linens for surgery, or gowns for patients. Partner with a provider who will take care of inventory for you that’s based on your needs over time. This way, you’ll know everything is always in stock without using your staff to store, move, and clean items. Improve morale, increase peace of mind, and make it easier to get daily work done.
5. The luxury of convenience.
Convenience alone may be the most effective nudge for you to realize that some things should just be done only by professionals. Utilizing a service that provides specialized laundry care can not only keep costs down but it can make your whole operation run smoother. Your soiled laundry leaves the facility only to return clean, sanitized, contamination-protected, and ready to use. That kind of service frees up time for your real work, day in and day out.
6. Patient satisfaction gets a boost.
When a patient isn’t happy, you’ll know about it. When they’re getting remarkable patient gowns and linens, you’ll likely hear about that, too. The key is in the “remarkable” part. If you’re especially concerned about patient comfort, choosing a healthcare laundry service could make all the difference in patient satisfaction.
ImageFIRST - Designed to Enhance the Patient Experience
When you partner with ImageFIRST Healthcare Laundry Specialists, your outsourced hospital laundry will be serviced with full advantage of our industry-leading, hospitality-inspired vision. With us, you get:
Our Customer Advocates are more than delivery drivers. They’re part of a dedicated service team that takes the stress of managing inventory away from your staff and becomes a partner in your success. Customer Advocates provide you with worry-free delivery, same-day Linen Rescue services, superior quality assurance, plus they free up your staff to focus on their patients.
Our ComfortFIRST service is all about enhancing comfort and improving patient care. It starts with quality gowns and linens for your patients and comfortable scrubs and lab coats for your staff. We go one step further to make your patients’ experience remarkable with our unique Comfort Care gowns and our Plush Promise: Switch to Comfort Care and you can increase patient satisfaction by at least 50%.
Every healthcare facility wants infection prevention that exceeds standards. Our Triple BioShield Protection® utilizes a powerful bacteria inhibitor for a “dead on contact” wash, delivered to you in plastic-wrapped protection. We stand behind our 5-Point Product Quality system that combines the highest sanitizing “Bright White” standards and quality products with accurate lab testing and hand-inspected results – before it’s delivered to your facility.
We provide you with the right amount of inventory that’s based on your needs, and that almost always leads to lower costs. In addition to inventory control, you can count on a fair price, flat-rate billing, and transparent invoices to help you manage budget expenses brilliantly.
Take Advantage of Outsourcing for Your Healthcare Laundry Services and Request a Quote
When you choose ImageFIRST, you’re choosing exceptional service. We are the largest and only national linen rental and laundry service specializing in the healthcare industry. We take pride in becoming an extension of your team and delivering remarkable results for you.
To learn more about ImageFIRST's worry-free laundry programs, please reach out to us and request a quote. We look forward to handling your medical laundry with the industry’s best care.