By Healthcare Facilities Today

Maintaining an on-premises laundry facility can be a costly decision for hospitals. Some situations warrant this cost, but available options in high-volume laundry arrangements means environmental services managers should carefully weigh the costs and benefits of each.     

There are pros and cons to every way to handle healthcare-generated laundry, as discussed in a Health Facilities Management article. An on-site laundry operation allows the facility to have the linens it wants whenever it wants. But as the patient mix moves more towards outpatient care, laundry volumes might drop to the point that the per unit cost (in supplies, utilities, labor, etc.) becomes too high. 

Moving the laundry facility off-site, either through a linen rental, by outsourcing just the laundering of the hospital's in-house linens, or through a co-op arrangement with several healthcare facilities means delivery of fresh linens is more rigid, but savings come into play through economies of scale. High-volume loads conserve water, energy and chemicals, allow labor to be more efficient, and support the purchase of higher-end machinery. In these arrangements, the burden of maintaining the machinery and managing labor expenses is shifted to the third-party service provider.

Making the decision to keep laundry services in-house or not hinges on really crunching the numbers to understand the full cost of in-house laundry services as compared to other options, says the article. Here are some of the measurements to take into consideration:

- Metered laundry utility costs
- Equipment efficiency
- Expected remaining equipment life and ability to replace/upgrade the units
- Costs to maintain linen inventory
- Worker productivity levels per piece or pound
- Future needs for ongoing laundry services

Sustainability considerations also come into play, as hospitals are starting to return more and more to reusable products instead of disposables, such as washable gowns instead of paper. To that end, the industry has a new certification from the Textile Rental Services Association that certifies sustainable practices at outsourced healthcare laundry service providers.

Read the article.