Insights into Healthcare Decision Making

Participants in the 2020 IMPACT Conference opening session walked away with a list of actionable ideas from four leading healthcare companies — Ascension Health, The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Maine Medical Center and Vizient — about what they expect from laundries and linen distribution services. Professionals from these highly-respected institutions shared their experiences of the value of textile care services and key performance indicators (KPIs), including the metrics they deem essential, along with the practices they have instituted to improve laundry and linen services.

Key issues, such as scrub loss, were met with chuckles after hearing The Johns Hopkins Hospital’s approach. Colleen Cusick, RN, Director of Materials Management and General Services, shared how hospital staff’s attempts, both doctors and nurses, to thwart the scrub machine’s requirement of one-for-one exchanges by placing a towel in the machine, rather than used scrubs, requires that the offender write a letter of apology to the linen staff before they have their scrub privileges reinstated.

Chris Christie, CLLM, Linen Manager of southeast Michigan for Ascension Health, emphasized the importance of credibility and accountability to long-term customer satisfaction. Christie related an experience with a unit that was reporting a linen shortage every day. A review of par levels indicated they should have adequate product. After checking a cart built for delivery to the unit, Christie discovered his linen staff were not stocking the cart to the prescribed par level. He re-loaded to par and took a picture to demonstrate what the cart should look like each day when it is delivered to the unit. Christie returned to the unit nurse with the picture, apologizing for not doing what they had promised, and reassuring them their carts would look like the picture going forward.  

Monitoring linen utilization can be an indicator that adjustments of specific product par may be warranted. Stephanie Gregg of Vizient, a major healthcare group purchasing organization (GPO), related a recent visit to a hospital customer that was encountering a replacement cost charge from the laundry for a history of lost pajama pants. She discovered, when making rounds, many of the exchange carts returning to the hospital linen room contained unused pajama pants. Failure to monitor utilization of these products and reduce the par level on this specific item resulted in unnecessary higher laundry costs for the hospital.

Participants also inquired about the experts’ experiences from regulatory authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic. James Mangini, RLLD, of Maine Medical Center Linen Services, revealed that laundry and linen services were back on Joint Commission’s radar after a long absence, but their concerns seemed to be more aligned with the use of textiles in patient care. Mangini said that in addition to visiting the hospital central linen room, surveyors were attentive to whether non-surgical isolation gowns were appropriately tied. He was happy to report it was a problem they avoided through the use of 3-arm isolation gowns that don’t require a tie closure.

It's not too late to gain all the insights and knowledge from this year's IMPACT Conference. All session recordings from the 2020 IMPACT Conference are now available in the ALM store! You may purchase access to bundles or individual sessions. For those who were IMPACT attendees, you may still access the recordings through the IMPACT app.