Five Simple Steps to Improve Linen Utilization
These steps will guide you through the task of helping your facility increase linen efficiency and save time and money. Improving linen utilization can decrease your waste stream, energy usage and costs.
Our goal is to help you assess, prepare and manage your long-term objectives.
Use these steps to help guide you down the path of improved linen utilization. And we’re here to help you every step of the way.
Take the Readiness Survey
Take the readiness survey provided by Medline to identify opportunities in your facility.
- Survey your staff to uncover common behaviors handling linen
- Identify areas of concern based on the results of the survey that require the most attention
- Target the biggest opportunities for improvement
- Prioritize a course of action that will begin to resolve the challenges at your facility
Contact Medline for help on setting up the survey and collecting results
Measure Linen Waste
Complete a “waste sort” to determine the amount of reusable linens thrown in the trash.
Any hospital waste stream could potentially contain dangerous materials, such as sharps. Please be very cautious while completing this waste sort and do so under the approval and supervision of hospital safety personnel. Be sure to obtain the appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) from safety personnel.
- Determine sample size and cost per pound. Ask your Medline Rep for tools to get your started.
- Sort through trash and record findings to determine your Linen Waste Inventory.
- Add weights and purchase costs
- Review data to Identify strategies to address problem areas
Don’t want to get down and dirty? Medline can complete this process for you
Identify Cost of Laundering Clean Linen
Conduct a Clean Linen Audit to measure the amount of money your facility is wasting through laundering clean linen.
- Determine timeline and responsibilities – decide on a length of time during which to conduct your audit and then review the procedures for post-discharge cleaning.
- Determine target area and sample size – choose which area of the facility and how many patient rooms to visit.
- Conduct walk-through inspection of each room – record findings.
- Calculate potential savings if clean linen is not laundered.
- Identify strategies to minimize costs
Ask your Medline Rep for Linen Utilization tips and tools for Staff Education.
Determine Impact of Hoarding
Anticipating shortages, nursing can sometimes hoard linens in their unit. This can affect staff. Offering education and in-services can help illustrate the impact of hoarding.
- Take a linen inventory. Medline can help to determine your Hoarding Baseline
- Compare inventory in circulation to the industry average
- Investigate red flags
- Calculate pounds per adjusted patient day (apd)
Host a Linen Awareness Day. Contact your Medline Representative to get started.
Monitor Progress
Continue to monitor the impact of your linen reduction program regularly and complete these measurements on an ongoing basis.
- Create a timeline that works for you based on the strategies being implemented
- Monitor progress by repeating the steps above within the timeline you chose (monthly, quarterly, yearly)
- Track results
Consider a web based solution. Medline offers LinenHelperNet to maintain detailed records of item quantities, weights, and charges for order restocking. Ask your rep for more information.
Scrubtrak: Take control of your scrubs and save.
Product loss, inventory shortages, laundry expenses and product tracking. Managing your facility’s OR scrub process is no easy task.
Introducing ScrubTrak, an automated dispensing, tracking and inventory control system. These easy-to-use dispensing and return machines can be placed in convenient locations for your staff to access and return their scrubs simply and efficiently.
Gain control over inventory
Reduce inventory shrinkage by up to 90% and laundering costs by 35%.1 Our cloud-based tracking and reporting system prevents unauthorized users and ensures scrubs are returned.
Increase productivity and ease of use
Anyone who knows how to use a vending machine can use ScrubTrak. Doctors, nurses and techs simply use their access device at the ScrubTrak machine, and a pre-selected pair of scrubs is dispensed.
Enhance compliance and infection prevention
Comply with AORN’s recommendation for laundering healthcare textiles to avoid the spread of infectious bacteria. ScrubTrak helps control this riskby providing return units in key locations throughout your facility.
Reference: 1. Intelligent Dispensing Solutions website – https://www.scrubtrak.com/inventory-management-control.
LinenHelperNet
Do you need to gain control of linen management? Medline has powerful, web-based software that can help drive down costs. If overstocks, shortages, pilferage and excess usage are challenges facing your facility, read on.
LinenHelperNet finds and fixes inefficiencies. The program uses your data to automatically calculate maximum and minimum inventory levels for each item using distribution pars and days of circulation.
- Custom reports are generated to help identify your unique challenges
- The program lets you manage linen usage down to the department or division level
- It also captures detailed data such as item quantities, weights and charges