USA
Intermountain Healthcare’s Central Laundry is approaching 40 years as being the predominant commercial laundry service in Utah. The laundry facility started operating in 1979, originally serving just five Intermountain hospitals at the time. Now the 70,000 square foot facility in Woods Cross, Utah has grown to become the largest healthcare laundry ser
vice in Utah and surrounding states.
The original hospitals served by the laundry included Cottonwood (now TOSH), LDS Hospital, McKay-Dee, Primary Children’s Hospital, and Utah Valley Hospital. The building now serves all the laundry needs for most Intermountain facilities as well as many other medical clinic groups and hospitals in Utah.
The laundry has also been a diversity leader, which includes a sponsored work program with The Columbus Community Centre in Salt Lake City to help people with disabilities gain vital work skills.
The laundry also employs immigrants from across the globe - over two dozen different languages are spoken with many inspiring stories from the employees. The Vuong family are refugees from Vietnam and endured hard trials just to make it to Utah. The Central Laundry has provided a stable job and became a beacon of hope for them.
Lubjo Rajcevic came from war-torn Croatia in 1999. He spoke little English, but one day when h
e noticed one of the laundry machines was broken, he said “I fix.” After that day he has become one of the top maintenance workers.
The Central Laundry services has also been a place where employees like to stay, with an average tenure of approximately 15 years.
Last year, the Central Laundry processed over 20 million pounds of laundry. One day alone, the facility processes 36 tons of laundry – the equivalent of an average family’s laundry done over the course of 40 years.
Intermountain Healthcare is a Utah-based not-for-profit system of 23 hospitals, 170 clinics, a Medical Group with about 2,300 employed physicians and advanced practice clinicians, a health plans group called SelectHealth, and other medical services.
