No department inside nursing homes has been spared the challenges of being short-staffed lately — laundry included.
“I suspect long-term care facilities are experiencing a loss of staff [inside laundry] not unlike those in nursing, housekeeping, maintenance and dietary,” said Mary Madison, RN, RAC-CT, CDP, a clinical consultant for Briggs Healthcare’s LTC/Senior Living unit. “Like everything, laundry is a team activity, and it’s all hands on deck.”
For many on-premise laundries, staff attrition is a problem that may be solved by outsourcing. One major player is TRSA, an organization that represents companies that launder and maintain linens and uniforms for healthcare and other sectors.
TRSA found renewed interest from long-term care after launching a massive digital campaign. It attributes the welcome response to the “increased interest in the industry’s accelerated need to reduce costs anywhere possible as facilities are pressed by strained margins, reliance on scant low-cost labor and reduced government support,” said President and CEO Joseph Ricci.
Another focal point for nursing home management is mitigating infection. Unitex President David Potack said the pandemic “has driven facilities to pursue greater awareness of infection risks and controls.”
“This is why nursing facilities need a full-time infection preventionist — to ensure people who work in laundry and elsewhere understand aseptic technique,” added Deborah Patterson Burdsall, Ph.D., RN-BC, CIC, FAPIC, infection preventionist/clinical in-service coordinator, Long Term Care Infection Prevention for APIC.
Medline Industries, which manufactures linens for healthcare providers and processors, has followed these trends closely.
Cristina Alvarez of Medline’s Post-Acute Care Infection Prevention program, said the labor shortage has led to inconsistencies in training due to increases in staff burnout, resulting in poor linen handling procedures that increase the risk of contamination and “significant impacts on safe work practices.”
“Continued prioritization of infection control needs must be a focus in 2022,” she said, adding that outsourcing can be a “failsafe solution” for labor-strapped SNFs.
