Understanding the True Costs of Your On-Premises Laundry

According to a survey by Modern Healthcare magazine, the most outsourced healthcare facility service is laundry services. This trend away from on-premises laundries, or OPLs, is driven by factors including increasing regulatory oversight, hazardous risk assessments, the search for greater scales of economy, and the overall costs of operating, maintaining, and upgrading a facility’s laundry equipment. Outsourcing enables healthcare providers to focus on their core business of patient care. The benefits of outsourcing your laundry services can include:

• Reduced labor and labor-related costs – Labor is the most expensive component of an OPL. Wages, HR staff costs, and worker compensation claims, to turnover are all factors that can significantly impact the bottom line of an OPL. In some cases, Crown customers have seen a 50% reduction in staffing while still providing appropriate coverage
• Improved efficiency – OPLs take a lot of water, energy, and chemicals to operate. Most OPLs simply do not have the volume, space, or capacity to run the cost-reducing, highly efficient equipment found at a commercial facility.
• Improved linen utilization – As experts in the field, a professional healthcare linen management and laundry service provider will help you set and adjust par levels, improve ordering habits, initiate inventory control measures, and increase staff education on linen loss issues. Crown’s new customers can often see a 5% reduction in their pounds per adjusted patient day.
• Increased floor space – Laundry facilities take up a lot of space. By outsourcing, this valuable real estate can be re-purposed for patient services, taking an overhead cost to a revenue-generating space.
• Exceed safety and cleaning standards – A commercial laundry with HLAC and TRSA certifications, such as Crown Laundry, will meet and exceed the highest industry standards, including those set by OSHA, CDC, JCAHO, AORN, ANSI/AAMI, Medicare, and Medicare for variables including detergents, water temperatures, bleach rinse, and the maintenance of equipment and laundry items.
• Reduced capital expenditures – Linen inventory, equipment maintenance, depreciation, and purchases are expensive. By contracting your linen service, this line item can be eliminated. Additionally, your healthcare facility can see immediate revenue from selling of existing equipment.
• More accurate budgeting – there are no surprises about your laundry costs with a reputable healthcare laundry service. Your costs should be based on usage and correlate to your average adjusted patient days.
• Reduced regulatory upkeep - by outsourcing your laundry service, you eliminate the headache of permits, inspections, staff certifications, and licenses and meeting new regulatory and safety mandates needed to operate an OPL.

We are experienced in large and small OPL transitions. Our comprehensive approach includes helping to create and execute a custom plan, from reviewing and making recommendations on utilization, par levels, ordering patterns, and distribution methodology, and assisting with the transition of staff and equipment.

Crown offers a FREE OPL Study. On request, our qualified staff will visit your facility for a week, study your program, verify your laundry weight, and present a report of the actual cost per pound. Contact us today to get started.