The Laundry Forum

[cmoore301]

What is the industry standard for where to place linen hampers in a hospital setting? We, at one time, had one in each patient room and then somehow got to where we just kept them in the soiled utility rooms. Now we would like to place them back in the patient rooms to increase infection control compliance but administrators do not want us to take up any more floor space in the patient rooms. The problem is having the hamper in the soiled utility increases the risk of improper handling of soiled. I have heard of one idea of hanging a hamper bag on the bathroom door. Has anyone else used this and does it work?

[mpallos]

We use a "zero lift" sytem from MHI 1 877 414 6454 ask for Tim Reynolds. There are fewer linen collection points on each ward (typically one for each 4 rooms). The linen is placed into larger totes whcih are lined with plastic bags which are tied closed when full. These are taken to be mechanically dumped into laundry carts which hold 4 - 6 totes full of linen (260 pounds). The carts are taken to my plant where they are mechanically dumped on to a conveyor to be sorted. Until this point zero lifting! We have have had NO lifting injuries from lifting bags of linen since this system was installed in 2002. We are a full presort plant doing 6.2 million pounds of Healthcare linen with 3 sorters 7.5 hours per day seven days per week. You may find reluctance on the nursing side to having a tote instead of a bag inside each room, it means walking out of the room with linen and dumping it into the tote but with one tote for each 4 rooms the tote can be moved near the room when the bedding is being changed. We did a study on lifting injuries and concluded that the reduction in lifting injuries to nursing and nursing aides was well worth the investment.