Long Beach healthcare laundry recertifies hygienically clean

10 March 2021


NORTH AMERICA
Medico Professional Linen Service, a family-owned laundry providing healthcare linens and textiles in Southern California for more than 80 years, has had its Long Beach facility achieve recertification for Hygienically Clean Healthcare. The renewal of this certification reflects the continued commitment to best management practices (BMPs) in laundering as verified by on-site inspection and their capability to produce hygienically clean textiles as quantified by ongoing microbial testing.

The Hygienically Clean Healthcare certification confirms the organisation’s continuing dedication to infection prevention, compliance with recognized industry standards and processing healthcare textiles using BMPs as described in its quality assurance documentation, a focal point for Hygienically Clean inspectors’ evaluation

In addition to the Long Beach location, Medico’s Los Angeles and South Gate, California laundries also hold certifications for Hygienically Clean Healthcare.

To achieve certification initially, laundries pass three rounds of outcome-based microbial testing, indicating that their processes are producing Hygienically Clean Healthcare textiles and diminished presence of yeast, mould and harmful bacteria. They also must pass a facility inspection. To maintain their certification, they must pass quarterly testing to ensure that as laundry conditions change, such as water quality, textile fabric composition and wash chemistry, laundered product quality is consistently maintained. Re-inspection occurs every two to three years.

This process eliminates subjectivity by focusing on outcomes and results that verify textiles cleaned in these facilities meet appropriate hygienically clean standards and BMPs for hospitals, surgery centres, medical offices, nursing homes and other medical facilities.

Hygienically Clean Healthcare certification acknowledges laundries’ effectiveness in protecting healthcare operations by verifying quality control procedures in linen, uniform and facility services operations related to the handling of textiles containing blood and other potentially infectious materials.

Certified laundries use processes, chemicals and BMPs acknowledged by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, American National Standards Institute and others. Introduced in 2012, Hygienically Clean Healthcare brought to North America the international cleanliness standards for healthcare linens and garments used worldwide by the Certification Association for Professional Textile Services and the European Committee for Standardization.

Objective experts in epidemiology, infection control, nursing and other healthcare professions work with Hygienically Clean launderers to ensure the certification continues to enforce the highest standards for producing clean healthcare textiles.

“Congratulations to Medico on their recertification,” said Joseph Ricci, TRSA president and CEO. “This achievement proves their commitment to infection prevention and that their laundry takes every step possible to prevent human illness.”

For information on Hygienically Clean and other TRSA certification programs, E: afreeman@trsa.org.



Privacy Policy
We have updated our privacy policy. In the latest update it explains what cookies are and how we use them on our site. To learn more about cookies and their benefits, please view our privacy policy. Please be aware that parts of this site will not function correctly if you disable cookies. By continuing to use this site, you consent to our use of cookies in accordance with our privacy policy unless you have disabled them.