by Don Simon
Hospitals, ER’s, doctor’s offices, and long term care facilities are supposed to feel like sacred, safe places. So it’s no surprise that medical cleaning is one of the most serious things which doctors and hospitals spend a lot of time attaining and a lot of money retaining.
If you’ve been feeling as though things weren't up to snuff and you have been wondering how you can improve your medical cleaning services, there are 3 vitally important things you need to make sure that your medical cleaning crew is on board with. If your gut is telling you that you don’t have your team on board for these three things you may wish to look elsewhere.
Thorough: When you’re dealing with medical office cleaning services you need to be sure that they are thorough. The only real way to be sure if your team is through is through trial and error. But if you come into the office after your medical cleaning team has been through and you see trash in bins, hazardous waste that’s not been disposed of properly or worse than you may need to think about a new medical office cleaning service.
Certified: Certification may seem like a needless hoop to leap through and it may be. You may find that your un-certified team works harder, has a better attitude, and is more complete than any team of certified cleaners you’ve found before. However how often is that truly the case? Non-certified teams can do things like cut corners, not be held up to industry standards, and they have no governing body to answer back to. They are more than likely some kind of transient workers and the work they are doing can be spotty at best. Look to work with cleaning companies that are ISSA CIMS Certified.
Accountable: Going right along with that last you want to know that your team of medical cleaning professionals are going to be held accountable for the work they do. If your contract with your medical cleaning crew doesn’t say anything about any guarantees or (worse!) if you don’t have any contract at all then who are you going to turn to when your mysterious medical cleaning service suddenly skips town and dissolves? The Better Business Bureau and the police are two means of last resort but wouldn’t you rather have a team of medical cleaning workers who have some governing body to answer to, who have some traceable means of accountability, who have been through some kind of stress test and who have passed any background screening? The last thing you’d want to see is your facility stripped to the walls one morning after you’d gone for the weekend by medical cleaning services who you have no way of tracking down.
Improving medical cleaning services is an ongoing story. As the industry gets more regulated and the bad seeds get weaned out there is far less likelihood that you and your office will be subjected to extreme circumstances such as the ones described above. But if you don’t do a thorough vetting of your medical cleaning crew and don’t have anyone who is verifiably certified and accounted for then you are just asking for your own heap of trouble.