Healthcare Laundries Accredited for Patient Safety
Inspecting, Accrediting for over 15 Years
HLAC LAUNDRY PROCESS MONITORING TOOLKIT™
WHAT IT IS
The HLAC Laundry Process Monitoring Toolkit™ is a new resource that validates the effectiveness of a laundry’s processes by measuring the number of microorganisms found in a laundry on hard surfaces, in the air, on linen, in the water and on employee hands.
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT
Responsible healthcare laundries go to great lengths to maintain the highest standards in the name of hygiene and infection prevention. Processing to these high standards can require considerable investment in time and expense
The challenge for operators is to continually know how well their processes are performing and whether their standards are on target as originally intended.
The HLAC Laundry Process Monitoring Toolkit™ safeguards standards integrity by enabling operators to regularly assess their internal cleaning and handling practices for bioburden.
HOW IT WORKS
Upon ordering from HLAC, the Laundry Process Monitoring Toolkit™ is delivered to the laundry in the form of a color-coded sampling kit. It contains detailed instructions and all of the supplies and materials necessary to collect samples.
Monitoring comprises five areas (linen, surfaces, air, water and hands), each with multiple tests. It takes approximately 14 to 18 person hours to complete, whereupon the samples are returned to an independent lab for analysis using validated recovery procedures. The monitoring can be performed at the laundry’s convenience – one time, quarterly, semiannually, etc.
Results, which are kept confidential, are communicated directly to the laundry. With the data in hand, the laundry may adjust accordingly the effectiveness of its overall plant hygiene, wash and hand-hygiene processes. This includes general comparative data for evaluating before and after conditions of cleaning processes, and the effects of process modifications and/or system improvements. It also provides trending data over time (e.g., reasons for process variability) for determining process consistency and identifying opportunities for improvements.
THERE’S NOTHING ELSE LIKE IT AVAILABLE
Vastly different from anything else available in the industry, the HLAC Laundry Process Monitoring Toolkit™ employs a proprietary extraction technique designed to recover a more accurate representation of bioburden load on laundry media.
The toolkit identifies microorganisms – not in increments but – by leaps and bounds.
The toolkit does for microorganism identification what the Hubble Telescope does for astronomy. Everything else that is currently available is like trying to look at the stars through a pair of opera glasses.