Just because a cleaning company wants your medical cleaning business does not mean they are qualified. Medical cleaning is a whole other endeavor and not at all the same as general office cleaning. Health care cleaning whether it is your medical offices, clinic, urgent care center, surgical center, acute care, long-term care, ambulatory facilities or hospital requires a solid understanding of the unique requirements of medical cleaning. In order to control costs, your medical cleaning company must understand the requirments of proper health care celaning. As an administrator, owner or facility manager, how do you find and qualify a great prospective commercial cleaning company to make sure they have what it takes to keep you on budget, keep your staff and patients safe and your positive reputation intact?
Medical Cleaning Checklist
The proper healthcare cleaning should be designed to ensure the safety and health of all patients and staff, improve patient satisfaction scores, ensure compliance with all regulatory and safety requirements and keep costs in check without sacrificing quality. If your medical cleaning company isn’t well informed regarding the specific requirements of healthcare cleaning, it’s likely time to look elsewhere. What areas should your prospective medical cleaning company be well versed on as to how it relates to your business and theirs?
- HIPPA
- Occupational Safety & Health Administration(OSHA) standards
- National Safety Council Blood borne Pathogen Program
- Basic Microbiology & Disinfectant Chemistry
- Aseptic Cleaning & Cleaning for Health
- Green Cleaning
- Universal Precautions
- Personal Protective Equipment
- Employee Screening
A lack of understanding of how each of these elements come together to create a consistent plan for high level cleaning can put your reputation and the health and safety of patients, practitioners and staff at risk.
Why People Are Paramount in Medical Facility Cleaning
Individuals are the backbone of any service driven business and health care cleaning relies most on its people to deliver exceptional service to its customers. Consumers have very different expectations of medical care facilities versus other commercial facilities. It is when in the care of others that people feel the most vulnerable and as such, look for signs that they are in expert hands. Any employee who works in your facility should reflect the professionalism that reinforces the image you are trying to portray with everyone who enters your facilities from patients to families to practitioners. To that end, you Michigan commercial medical cleaning company must thoroughly screen all employees to help find a team that is poised to become an easy extension of your existing staff. Certainly drug screening and criminal background checks are a must, however the very best healthcare cleaning companies will go beyond those basics. Items like personality testing and employment and reference verification can add an extra layer of security .
Why Training Specifically for Medical Cleaning Is a Necessity
Once your medical cleaning company has narrowed down the employee pool to the very best candidates, they must offer them specific training to do their jobs at a level above what is expected. Cleaning your medical offices, clinic, urgent care center, surgical center, acute care, long-term care, ambulatory facilities or hospital is unlike any other kind of facility maintenance. It requires a solid understanding of cleaning for health including issues like compliance in the areas of HIPPA, blood borne pathogens and aseptic cleaning. Your Michigan medical cleaning company should have a documented record of the training each employee in your facility has received.
Systems In Place to Insure Consistent, Responsive Service
Good people are still people and people are variable from one day to the next. To insure that you receive the most reliable, consistent top-notch service, your cleaning company should have appropriate systems in place to keep everything operating smoothly. Just as there are checklists and safeguards in medical systems, there must be in medical cleaning systems. Your cleaning team should know precisely what they are required to do and be up to date on any changes or adjustments you have made with your medical cleaning company. The best healthcare companies have great communication plans in place to keep everyone in the loop and everything running smoothly. When interviewing prospective, it is wise to ask about these systems and how they will work for you. The best Michigan cleaning companies will be happy to let you “behind the curtain” to see how they deliver on their promises to you.
Transparent Pricing
No one wants to guess at what he or she will get and what it will cost him or her. To that end, your Michigan medical cleaning company should offer transparent pricing. It should be simple and straightforward to insure you understand what they have promised to deliver for the cost you have agreed to pay. In doing this not only do you avoid surprises and shortcuts, you have a great benchmark for both you and your janitorial company to measure success.
Flexible Staffing
In today’s healthcare environment, changes can come fast. Between new HIPPA regulations to the Affordable Care Act, it can be a challenge to keep up with it all. Working with a medical cleaning company that offers flexible staffing can be a lifesaver. Maybe your facility experiences high volumes toward the end of the year as people schedule procedures and such after satisfying deductibles. Or perhaps the start of the school year sees added patient volume as parents complete vaccination requirements. Whatever your specific needs, the right medical custodial service should be available to staff up and down as you require with minimal interruption in services.
Your Medical Facility Should Be In the Hands of Trusted, Experienced Professionals
You will get a measurably cleaner healthcare environment and consistent high performance from a medical cleaning company that has earned the trust of their customers and has a proven record of high performance in healthcare cleaning. Don’t leave your satisfaction to chance. Look for those companies that use the most advanced, scientifically validated cleaning methods and equipment available to help best serve their healthcare customers.
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