Are You Looking For The Wrong Things In Your Medical Cleaning Company

Red Flags To Look Out For From Your Medical Office Cleaning Company

What should you be looking for when judging janitorial quotes and bids? When considering prospective medical cleaning companies, prices and services can often be very difficult to compare. It really shouldn’t be the case. A professional, established cleaning company should provide you with transparent pricing and a clear quote. Imprecise quotes and cloudy pricing is a sure sign that you aren’t dealing with a professional. Not only does it make it harder to compare quotes from multiple companies to find your best value, it is nearly impossible to hold a cleaning company accountable if you don’t know exactly what you are promised and how much you are paying for it. And while it is imperative quotes are clear, you also should not accept hurried, one size fits all quotes from prospective janitorial companies. The best janitorial quotes come after site visits and reflect specific needs that you have identified. The best janitorial quotes are built around the select needs of your facility and the company’s ability to meet these needs.

How Are Medical Cleaners Screened?

Another important aspect of any cleaning company to look at is their hiring and screening processes. Frontline staff and medical cleaners are the people who will be in and out of your facility performing services. Who they are matters. Is your healthcare cleaning company doing everything (and more) required to vet the people they are sending into your facility? Are they doing comprehensive criminal background checks and drug screening? Are they verifying past employment and checking references? Are they working hard to establish themselves as a good place to work in the community thus attracting and retaining people well suited for the work? The people in your facility must be trustworthy and take their job seriously.

Is Your Healthcare Cleaning Company Training Their People?

While hiring and screening is important, it isn’t the only significant thing to look at regarding your cleaners. Your cleaning staff must be safe AND competent, well trained for general medical cleaning as well as the specific needs of your facility. This means your healthcare cleaning service’s staff needs to be provided with the groundwork of basic commercial cleaning and industry relevant training to meet the unique requirements of your facility. Having staff that is trained specifically in medical cleaning is critical to a successful partnership and effective, consistent service.

Does Your Healthcare Cleaning Company Offer Competitive Pay & Benefits?

Does your janitorial company have strong management, competitive pay and opportunities where employees are rewarded for going above and beyond for their customers? Do they have a culture that supports and encourages great work and a team effort? Do they treat the people like well, people? If not, they are not doing enough to foster employee success and retention. Cleaning staff are often classified as unskilled laborers, but this designation is often misleading. Cleaning staff work hard and require extensive training to do their job effectively. Companies that don’t have competitive pay and rewards aren’t going to attract and retain the best cleaning staff. That leads to high turnover damaging the overall quality, consistency and value of your medical cleaning. Competitive pay and benefits promote employee satisfaction and retention translating into better service and cost savings in the long run.

Communication From Your Medical Cleaning Company Can Be A Life Saver

Everyone makes mistakes and your commercial cleaning company and their staff are no exception. What separates the professional cleaning companies from the not-so-professional cleaning companies is how they handle mistakes when they come up. The best companies know that problems will come up and have a plan in place BEFORE they show up. They tell you if there is an issue no matter how large or small it is so it gets addressed correctly. They don’t let small missteps turn into growing problems and intractable issues.

Accountability Can’t Be a Paper Tiger

While many employees care about and work hard at their jobs, accountability systems help assure reliability and consistency. Accountability can also help motivate even top performers because they know their stellar work isn’t going unnoticed! Accountability can come in the form of a detailed checklist, regular inspections of work done, or “Smart Cleaning plans” that can help keep teams on track. Is your Hospital cleaning service assuring accountability from their team? Regular janitorial inspections can be a great way to assure accountability and even catch issues before they spiral out of control. We see all too often that companies will start with a plan for effective service and then just assume that it is being implemented and done correctly without any follow up. Janitorial inspections help prevent mediocre work and even help push for continual improvement from your health care cleaners.

Medical Cleaning & Green Cleaning Often Go Hand In Hand

Many companies have environmental and sustainability directives they are striving to meet. Green cleaning can offer an effective and budget-friendly way to help your medical facility reach its green cleaning goals. Green cleaning technology has progressed by leaps and bounds in the last ten years and is both effective and relatively easy to implement. With the right medical office cleaning company you can get access to innovative cleaning equipment, green cleaners and resource saving methods that help reduce waste, reduce resource and energy usage, improve indoor air quality, and stop sound pollution in your facilities. The best part of it is, it can even help you save money.

Cleaning For Health Can’t Be Optional

Cleaning for health focuses on best practices that effectively clean in a way that minimizes the spread of disease causing germs and utilizes products and practices to safeguard the health of everyone involved: cleaning employees, your employees and patients. These practices can include the use of color-coded cleaning rags to avoid cross contamination. This helps assure a towel used to clean a toilet isn’t used again to wipe down a door handle. This is important in any facility but nowhere more important that in a facility rendering medical treatment. Proper labeling of cleaning products with specific use instructions is also critical to assure cleaners knows exactly how each product is to be used. Furthermore, training cleaners on proper, manufacturer recommended contact times and dwell times assures disinfectant efficacy. Similarly, utilizing established best practices like “touch point” cleaning for maximum impact where it is needed most can raise the level of your cleaning significantly. Finally, regular equipment maintenance should be implemented to insure optimal operation and effectiveness.

Good Cleaning Doesn’t Happen By Accident

Good cleaning doesn’t happen by accident. The best medical cleaning companies start with a solid plan. If you current medical cleaning company is on shaky ground and isn’t constantly striving to meet your individual needs, it might be time to move on.

Stathakis operates right here in southeastern Michigan delivering effective, professional medical cleaning services. You might say our “treatment plans” vastly outperforms those of our competition. If you want the most effective health care cleaning services for your facility delivered with professionalism, value and responsiveness, please contact us and we can work with you to put together a clear, straightforward, workable plan for your individual facility.