How to Choose the Right Medical Linen Services Provider

Medical linen services can have a significant impact on your healthcare facilities, specifically patient perception and staff engagement. But how do you choose the right healthcare linen and laundry partner to ensure that impact is positive?

For large healthcare companies with multiple locations, keeping linens clean is a big job. Your facilities manage a mountain of dirty gowns, scrubs, bedding, towels, curtains, and more.

Are you and your staff spending too much time double-checking your current linen provider’s deliveries? What happens when you need to rent additional apparel or linens? Do your current medical linen services fully meet all needs at every location?

Here are the top considerations for choosing a new partner to provide the best possible services for your healthcare organization’s medical linens and laundry.

Learn More About Linen Services for Multi-Location Organizations

Is it Designed for Healthcare?

Make it a priority to choose a medical linen rental and cleaning service that specifically serves the healthcare industry. Your facilities need specialized cleaning and sanitization processes designed for the medical field, and many providers can’t meet these high standards.

• • Dead-on-contact washing that kills 99.99%+ of pathogens
  • Bacteria-inhibiting softeners and treatments
  • Bright white standards and hand inspection
  • Plastic sanitary wrapping for transportation
  • Safe storage and delivery procedures

Cost management is also a significant consideration. Major healthcare companies need consistent, reliable pricing that fits into strict medical facility budgets with no surprises, bloated inventories, or suddenly tacked-on fees.

Also, what happens when you have questions or need extra information? Do you have to call a 1-800 number and wait on hold? Do they push you to an online chatbot? Instead, your organization deserves dedicated service from a Customer Advocate who puts your needs first, as well as a local and national team to support your locations.

What’s the Scale of Medical Linen Services?

The size of your organization impacts the services you need. If you are a healthcare company with numerous locations spread across a large area, you need a partner that can scale up to meet your organization’s full scope of needs.

Here’s something you might not realize about U.S. linen services: most linen providers are small, locally-focused businesses that don’t have national footprints, and those that are national providers, do not specialize in healthcare exclusively or are an alliance or network of locally owned businesses that do not offer consistency across products, billing, and service.

Your large enterprise needs a genuinely national healthcare linen and laundry partner with the resources to serve multiple locations with ease and consistency in quality, products, pricing, and cleanliness.

The more services your partner offers, the more streamlined and stress-free your linen management will be. Ask about what services beyond linen and laundry management they can provide, such as restroom supplies, floor mats, and more. This will help reduce your vendor contacts and may allow for extra savings with minimal oversight from your staff.

Learn More About Linen Services for Multi-Location Organizations

Are They Reputable and Accredited?

Check the background and accreditations of any linen partner before arranging a new agreement with them. Any reputable laundry/linen provider should be able to provide documentation that shows their professional accreditations.

Ask about compliance with standards set by organizations like the Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council (HLAC), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).

HLAC accreditation is particularly important among medical linen providers because it shows that they’re a member of the nation’s most respected laundry organization and follow the best practices in the industry. If you have any lingering doubts about a provider, ask for a plant tour of their facility and see their practices for yourself.

Below are two links to excellent resources from the CDC that will help you “speak the language of linens” and understand U.S. standards for healthcare safety and infection control.

• Guidelines for Environmental Infection Control in Healthcare Facilities
• Environmental Infection Control Guidelines

Does the Medical Linen Service Provider Offer Convenient Scheduling?

Consider the time your organization spends managing its linen inventory. Reassess whether your staff and patients are having positive or negative experiences. A new partner could help you better manage your schedules and inventory.

Do you always have the right number of medical garments and bed linens on hand, or do you run out frequently? How’s your inventory of hygiene products, floor mats, and cubicle curtains?

It could be well worth your time to discuss your needs with a national linen provider that serves large healthcare companies and can offer savvy problem-solving. For example, an inventory management solution like ScrubVAULT® can revolutionize scrub procedures. With the ScrubVAULT, a compact digital cabinet that stores, tracks, and dispenses scrubs, you can ensure your staff always has fresh scrubs on hand.

ImageFIRST Can Handle Your Medical Linens

Did you know that ImageFIRST® is the only truly national healthcare-focused medical linen rental partner that offers agreed-upon pricing for multi-location healthcare partners? We serve large enterprises across the country with linen programs designed specifically for multi-location companies and we can handle even the biggest and most challenging jobs. ImageFIRST owns and operates more HLAC-accredited facilities in the U.S. than any other medical linen rental and laundry organization.

No matter the size of your healthcare organization, you can trust us for reliable, affordable, and safe medical linen services. To learn more about the benefits of choosing ImageFIRST, please contact us to share your needs and request a quote.

Learn How We Can Deliver Consistency with Your Linen Program