Hospital Linen Management: The Complete Picture
Is your healthcare system wasting resources on hospital linens without seeing a return on your investment? Are you frustrated with a slow, unsafe, or ineffective process?
You have better options! Here’s how to develop a more complete picture of your hospital linen management.
Partner With a Service Focused Linen Provider
Spend your hospital laundry and linen resources wisely by selecting a dedicated customer-focused linen partner. A consistent and reliable partner works within the bounds of your agreement to get the most out of your program at all times.
They manage your inventory needs, providing timely delivery, cleaning, and replacement. By helping to carefully track your linens, they build an understanding of your fluctuating patient census and staff requirements to keep your operations running smoothly.
A true customer-focused linen partner always puts your needs first. They meet or exceed your expectations for cost, convenience, scheduling, and other inventory management details. Ideally, they’ll have a very high customer retention rate in the 95% to 100% range.
ImageFIRST has an impressive customer retention rate of 97%. We provide dedicated Customer Advocates to support your facility’s unique linen inventory needs.
Quality Matters
The right price point differs for every organization. You need a linen partner that can provide affordable options, working within your boundaries for budgeting and pricing but doesn’t compromise the quality of your linens.
How is your cost management when it comes to linens? Is it easy to manage your costs or is it an ongoing challenge? Perhaps you need more transparent invoices and simplified billing practices without hidden surprises.
The overhead costs at a hospital can quickly spiral out of control. Cleaning and restocking linens is an example of a cost category that’s difficult to manage without monitoring data about your usage.
Gather facts and figures about your organization’s past linen needs, current load, projected future demands, and more. Locate a linen management partner with the experience and expertise to help you use this information to develop a sensible cost-containment plan and avoid excessive spending.
Find Ways to Minimize Losses
Another money-saving tip is to streamline your hospital laundry and linen management processes to minimize losses from wasteful activities. Are there opportunities to make things faster and more cost-effective?
The right hospital linen service offers benefits like:
- Optimizing your hospital linen inventory management through ongoing monitoring
- Quarterly updates to ensure you don’t have too many or too few linens
- Proactive inventory controls that keep you ahead of trends
- Adjustable inventory that can vary based on your patient load
- Technology to make the entire process easier
Look into adding new linen management technology like RFID-chipped scrubs and lab coats. Your staff members won’t notice the RFID chips integrated into the fabric of the clothing, but this technology makes garment tracking and replacement much easier.
You can also use a locking storage or scrub management system, like the ImageFIRST VAULTSystem, to improve the security of your linen management. Below, you’ll find additional information about ImageFIRST’s industry-leading scrub management system.
Never Sacrifice High Infection Prevention Standards
The healthcare industry demands strict adherence to standards for health, safety, security, and privacy. This goes hand-in-hand with regulatory guidelines for facility-wide cleanliness and hygiene.
Stay compliant with a linen management approach like ImageFIRST’s VAULTSystemTM. It uses a compact digital cabinet to store, track, and dispense scrubs, simplifying and controlling scrub management.
Ensure your staff always has clean and safe garments on hand. Scrubs, lab coats, and other medical garments are transported in closed-bagged laundry carts until they arrive back in your inventory, ready to use.
Not every linen partner provides this high level of service and security. Before choosing a partner, check their background and accreditations, paying close attention to whether they follow HLAC (Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council) standards. Determine whether they have the vast experience it takes to serve your hospital or health system, especially if you run a large enterprise with an enormous demand for sanitized linen and laundry.
Fully-Managed Hospital Linen and Medical Laundry Services
At ImageFIRST, we set a high standard for hospital linen inventory management. We’re known throughout the industry for our strong principles, including delivering remarkable customer-focused service.
We base our services on your needs, including your budget and patient volume. We’ll help you build a clear picture of your linen management needs, seeking opportunities to streamline the process at every level.
The price you’ll pay will always be fair and reasonable with no unexpected jumps in pricing or confusing formulas. We offer flat-rate billing based on your inventory requirements - which makes budgeting easy and stress-free.
You’ll have a dedicated single point of contact, known as your Customer Advocate, to help you manage your inventory and maintain the uninterrupted flow of clean and sanitized linens. Quarterly monitoring and ongoing support will ensure you’re always happy with the process.
With our 97% customer retention rate, we’re more than a vendor, we’re an extension of your team.
To learn more about your options for fully managed hospital linen services, please contact us.