On-premise laundries (OPLs) must hold themselves up to the same sort of healthcare laundry standards as commercial laundries and cooperatives. So state Rocco Romeo and John Scherberger in a collaborative article just published in Facility Cleaning Decisions magazine.
Romeo is board president of the International Association for Healthcare Textile Management (IAHTM), and Scherberger is board president of the Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council (HLAC).
In their article, "Proper Laundering Aids in Infection Prevention" the authors observe that more hospitals are beginning to recognize that their laundries need to be part of their overall infection prevention strategies. As such, they're asking for "formal acknowledgment from the laundry verifying that its processes are based on the highest professionally recognized standards for patient safety and infection prevention."
The "same scrutiny" and "similar healthcare laundry standards" apply to on-premise laundries, say Romeo and Scherberger. They note that there are more than 600 standards found in the HLAC Accreditation Standards document but specifically for facility managers overseeing laundry, the authors highlight 10 HLAC principles that directly apply: functional separation, hand hygiene, environmental cleaning, cart disinfection, linen protection during transport, air flow, sorting, washing, drying, and finishing.
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