The progression of healthcare changes in this modern era is unprecedented, and your medical cleaning company needs to keep up. As new knowledge about cleanliness, infection, and patient satisfaction comes to the forefront, it is critical that your medical office cleaning service adapts with it. It may not seem obvious at first, but your medical janitorial service plays a critical role in your patient’s safety and the ever important HCAHPS score. The concern about getting sick in a hospital is just as relevant as ever, especially with the high volumes of sick patients that many hospitals take on a daily basis. Not too mention newer, antibiotic resistant viruses, bacteria and fungus like candida auris which preys on people with weakened immune systems and has been recently reached New York, New Jersey, Illinois leading the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to add it to it’s list of germs believed to be “urgent threats.” If you are a Facility Manager of any type of clinic, surgical center, hospital or other general care facility, having the right hospital cleaning service is critical to keeping your patients and staff safe. Effective healthcare cleaning services set a solid foundation from which to elevate patient care.
With medical cleaning, there is simply too much at stake to leave it to amateurs. If your commercial medical cleaning company is not on top of the cutting edge advances in their industry, you, your staff, and patients are all at risk. Unlike other industries, you cannot have a subpar cleaning service in your hospital. While reputation is important in every industry, no where else is patient/consumer perception of cleanliness as important. Literally it can be a matter of life or death. Any medical specialty requires extensive training, experience, knowledge, and a drive to succeed, your medical cleaning service needs the benefit of the same levels of know how. All too often we see janitorial companies that have had some success in general cleaning and think they are ready to become medical cleaners. If your prospective Michigan medical cleaning company can’t clearly demonstrate their industry relevant training, knowledge, and experience along with the respective accreditation, you should not risk your facility’s health and reputation. Failure to do your due diligence can have disastrous results.
Cleaning hospitals and healthcare facilities isn’t a simple task. Healthcare is its own special kind of niche cleaning service. It has its own risks, compliance and regulatory concerns and requires the utmost care with safety. You can’t take risks with medical cleaning; when your company doesn’t have the experience or the ability to keep up with the industry, there is a potential for harm to your patients, staff, and anyone that comes into contact with your facility. Medicine and the healthcare industry has made huge strides in care over the years, in fact, the advances have been exponential raising life span and increasing the potential for elevated quality of life for many. As such, the supporting industries need to advance with them. It may seem trivial, but HAIs, healthcare acquired infections causes nearly two million cases of infection a year, nearly a third of such infections can be directly traced back to poor facility cleaning. This says nothing of the flu season, it is nearly impossible to determine how many cases of the flu are contracted yearly at hospitals because of a lack of adequate hospital cleaning. All too often general cleaning companies rather than experienced medical cleaning professionals don’t realize that their cleaning needs to go deeper than what lies on the surface. Sure your counters look clean, but you run the enormous risk of spreading virulent illness all over your building if they are not properly disinfected. Cleaning is not just what you can see on the surface, especially in a medical setting. If cleaning isn’t taken seriously and done effectively, people are going to get sick, and you will be met with some catastrophic outcomes that were avoidable with effective cleaning and maintenance.
We’ve put a heavy emphasis on why cleaning for health is critical in your facility, but this isn’t to diminish the importance of making sure your facility looks clean. Effective medical cleaning must impart a deep clean eradicating disease causing germs where they lie AND assure your facility looks clean and welcoming. As you are likely aware, HCAHPS is responsible for keeping track of patient satisfaction and approval and it directly affects you and your facility. How clean your facility appears is a serious consideration for the HCAHPS survey. In fact many industry regulatory services such as HIPAA, HCAHPS, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), CDC (Center for Disease Control), and AORN (Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses) put a heavy emphasis on the importance of how your facility appears to your patients. Your medical facility cleaning services need to know how to clean for both health and appearance, anything less and you are not getting the value and assurances you and your facility deserve.
Here are a couple quick questions to gauge the competency of your prospective medical office cleaning companies: Do they know the difference between clean, disinfected, sterile and aseptic? Can they explain the core differences between the application, usages, and various products that they plan to use around your facility such as sanitizers, detergents, virucides, and disinfectants among others? Aseptic cleaning, for instance, is used in a number of different clinical conditions to help reduce the spread of disease and other infection causing pathogens. In any hospital, techniques like this require specific training and experience to master. Understanding the difference between critical and non-critical cleaning, correct product usage, dwell times, product descriptions, protective equipment and disinfection protocol is can be the difference between life and death for some people. Your medical cleaning service provider should be using the correct equipment. Without commercial hospital cleaning grade EPA-approved disinfectant products used on touch points and hot spots with the correct dwell times, you aren’t going to get the results you need. The danger of healthcare associated infections is so prevalent that it has its own cleaning technique to help address. Terminal cleaning is used to target and immediately reduce the bacterial and pathogenic load on high-touch surfaces such as door handles, computer terminals, tables, remotes, rails, and other frequently used, high traffic items. Every aspect of the medical cleaning industry has a proven science backing it. Is your medical cleaning company aware of them?
To succeed in the ever advancing medical cleaning industry, your prospective healthcare cleaning company needs to keep moving forward all the time. Relevant industry certifications like the ISSA’s CIMS and CIMS-GB accreditation can be a great way to find these companies. Companies that go out of their way to demonstrate their commitment to the industry's best practices are going to be far better candidates for consideration that those that choose to wing it. Further, like many industry certifications, the CIMS certification can show mastery in different aspects of the cleaning industry, namely, medical. As such, these companies are going to be in a much better spot to meet the unique needs of your medical building. This free tool provides a lot of insight into your prospective medical cleaning services company’s ability to innovate, lead, be responsive and provide a quality service. With certifications like CIMS and evidence-based analysis of a cleaning companies commitment to industry best practices and understanding the specific issues inherent in medical cleaning, you can find a company ready and willing to deliver the services your healthcare facility deserves.