Hospital Cleaning Requires a Standard of Care Beyond General Office Cleaning

Certainly, you want your healthcare facility to look good and be welcoming to patients, visitors and staff but medical cleaning is about way more than how things look on the surface. An effective Michigan medical cleaning service needs to not only make sure everything appears clean, but actually is clean and hygienic. Patient health is paramount. Cleaning must protect against Healthcare Acquired Infections (HAIs) and other prevalent pathogens. This helps you build a strong, reputable perception of your medical facility and also ensures that patients and staff are safe and have an overall high perception of the quality of care you provide.

Cleaning for health is critical in medical cleaning. This means cleaning that gets below the surface to eliminate disease causing germs where the congregate and following all other industry best practices that all add up to a better, safer clean in your facility. You cannot trust just cleaning company to handle medical cleaning, it takes, knowledge, experience and a level of consistency that not all commercial cleaning companies can deliver.

Experience is Critical With Healthcare Cleaning Services

As noted, not just any janitorial services company can fill the needs of a medical building. In order to deliver an appropriate standard of care, a cleaning company must have the proper experience and training in order to meet the industry specific requirements of healthcare. No matter if your building happens to be a surgical center, hospital, clinic, ambulatory center, professional medical cleaning services are a must.

So how do you find those cleaning companies truly up to the task? First, such medical cleaning service providers understand where to put time and money in order to provide the best possible services for their medical cleaning accounts. Not only this, but the most effective healthcare cleaning services know they must provide their front line staff with training specifically relevant to your medical building, assuring you are receiving the highest quality services possible. They never skip on proper recruitment, screening, training, certification and other relevant staff elements so that the people in your facility are trained and trustworthy.

Similarly, the most effective medical cleaning services will assure reliability though accountability through the use of systems and processes that keep communication open and things running smoothly. This can include things like regular janitorial inspections, open book communication and timely responsiveness guarantees. Not any run-of-the-mill cleaning service will make the cut, your medical cleaning company must have an understanding and implement the industry best practices that take their service from good to great.

Outsourcing Healthcare Cleaning Can Streamline Services & Assure Effective Cleaning

With the medical cleaning industry being so demanding, finding the right company for your building is challenging as ever. As a result, we often see Facility Managers try to incorporate in-house medical cleaning instead of looking for a professional medical cleaning service company. While smooth, integrated medical cleaning is a key part of any successful medical building, in-house cleaning is almost never the way to go about it. Most Facility Managers, especially those in the medical industry have more than enough to do. On top of that, you lose one of the major advantages of outsourcing cleaning, getting to focus on your core responsibilities.

Managing medical cleaning in-house means that you are essentially operating a complete business within your core business, which just adds more to your already full plate. Additionally, when you outsource medical janitorial services it means that you can better predict costs and have added options and flexibility to meet your changing needs. You probably don’t have the experience and equipment necessary to streamline the cleaning process all while improving patient safety, having better customer care, increasing HCAHPS scores, insuring regulatory compliance and keeping infection under control all while staying within your price range, but the right medical cleaning service can help you stay on target.

Cost Is An Important Thing But Not the ONLY Thing

We have never met a Facility Manager with a maintenance budget so ample that no choices or concessions had to be made with regard to cleaning and maintenance. Staying on budget and getting the level of services you need requires skillful balance. Of course, nearly every Facility Manager wants to find ways to reduce the cost of medical cleaning, but price alone cannot be the decision maker. There is a difference between saving money and cutting into the budget in a way that is detrimental to the health and safety of your patients, staff and the environment as a whole.

Your commercial medical cleaning companies must operate with Smart Cleaning principles in mind. This means making adjustments to service to fit your budget constraints in ways that make sense for your individual facility. Any adjustments to services or frequency of services cannot come at the expense of health and safety. It simply isn’t acceptable to put the health of your patients at risk in order to provide a cheaper service. The best medical cleaning service providers know how to cut costs without costing you or your patient’s health. Price is significant certainly, but value is critical.

Not All Hospital Housekeeping Services Have What it Takes

There is no one-size fits all cleaning service, and so it can be difficult to figure out what you should be looking for in a prospective medical cleaning services company. With many companies, you can get a sense of what kind of value they are going to deliver simply by looking at how they conduct business and document their processes. So what should you be on the lookout for?

• Do they ask the right questions and come prepare for their site visit?
• Do they utilize documented employee training and screening practices to lower turnover?
• Do they comprehensively screen their employees?
• Are they committed to using medical grade cleaning solutions and equipment?
• Have they trained their teams on the proper use of these medical grade cleaning chemicals?
• Do they adhere to a strict observation of industry best practices?
• Do they have a track record of solid performance in other medical and healthcare buildings?
• Are they CIMS certified with specific knowledge of blood borne pathogen guidelines?
• Do they conduct regular site inspections to insure quality and consistency of the service they provide?
• Do they have a solid understanding of HIPPA and other key regulation and compliance issues?

When You Are Considering Medical Cleaning Companies Ask the Right Questions

• Does the medical office cleaning company maintain safety compliance training for OSHA, HIPPA, & Blood borne Pathogens?
• Does the hospital cleaning company use of EPA approved, spore-killing disinfectant cleaning agents?
• Is a potential hospital cleaning service aware of the disinfecting strategies required for proper infection control?
• Does a janitorial services company have real experience working in hospitals and other medical environments?
• Are they in compliance with all federal, state, and local regulations?
• Is their staff efficient and well trained?
• What specifically do they do to prepare employees for medical cleaning?

Don’t Settle For Substandard Care

While it can be difficult to find the right partner in your facility’s maintenance, it is entirely possible to find an affordable, reliable medical cleaning contractor that keeps your facility healthy, clean and welcoming. You can save money without having to sacrifice the quality and partner with a company that will get the work done the way you want it with little management or effort on your part. It is imperative that you protect the health and safety of anyone that comes into your building, and it starts with solid facility maintenance. Here at Stathakis, we work with companies in southeastern Michigan to deliver an effective cleaning plan for your medical facility. We offer a professional and reputable “treatment plan” for various medical facilities that outperforms our competitors in nearly every category without costing you more. Your patients and staff deserve to have a healthy, well cleaned facility from a company that values responsiveness, professionalism and attention to detail.