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The Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council (HLAC) addresses pertinent industry issues relating to infection prevention and control in the September edition of Infection Control Today(ICT).
In "Industry Roundtable: Healthcare Laundry (Sept. 13),"Gregory Gicewicz provides HLAC's perspective on a wide range of topics about the "circular process" of ensuring hygienic healthcare textiles (HCTs) for every patient in the hospital. The article comes as HLAC gets set to participate (Booth #312) in the Association for the Healthcare Environment (AHE) EXCHANGE 2018 conference in Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 23-26.
Gicewicz is president of Sterile Surgical Systems and past-president and inspection committee chair for HLAC. HLAC is a nonprofit organization that inspects and accredits laundries processing textiles for hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities.
In the ICT article, Gicewicz discusses how Infection Preventionists (IPs) can make a significant difference toward enhancing infection prevention efforts relevant to HCTs.
"We would encourage as a reinforcing step in this direction the establishment of open communication and collaboration between the healthcare IP and the laundry profession, specifically the laundry vendor," he says. "A good practice is for the hospital IP team members to treat their healthcare laundry professionals as part of their extended team, where there's an ongoing sharing of updates in infection control and prevention efforts and in the regulatory and licensing arenas. Important to this team-style relationship is for the IP to visit the healthcare laundry to become acquainted with the personnel responsible for administering the laundry."
Gicewicz also notes that while outbreaks of infectious diseases associated with laundered HCTs are extremely rare (there have been only 13 outbreaks over the past 40 years attributed to laundered, clean HCTs), when they do happen, they can affect not only the lives and safety of patients and staff but a facility's reputation and financial health.
"To maintain the quality and cleanliness of processed HCTs for use in a clinical setting, it is worthwhile to have an awareness of when and where, and how HCTs can become contaminated prior to their use and to take measures accordingly," he says.
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