For a healthcare facility, cleaning isn’t only necessary for the comfort of employees and patients, but these tasks are critical for the health and safety of everyone in the facility. There’s a lot more that goes into healthcare cleaning services than just emptying trash containers and straightening up the exam rooms as it were.

Professional cleaning services are necessary for sanitizing and disinfecting surfaces, ensuring fresh odors, and relaying the overall confidence of a clean and healthy environment for your patients.  This article offers 3 Healthcare Facility Cleaning Tips to help mature your cleaning operations if needed.

1. Build A Custom Cleaning Program

A professionally cleaned medical office sets the right impression from the moment each patient walks through the door. Maintaining a healthy and clean healthcare facility showcases the service your team offers. But it can take a bit of work to keep up with constant cleaning tasks that need to be addressed.  And, every facility is different with its own unique requirements.

To keep things well kept and prepared for changing needs, it is best to have a customized cleaning program in place. This proactive approach ensures that you are staying ahead of essential tasks, thus maintaining a healthy and safe environment.

Here are some ideas that might assist in building the right program:

• Are there times during the year that patient activity ramps up, thus prompting an increase in cleaning tasks?
• Are there days during the week that have patterns of heavier foot traffic, thus requiring ramped up cleaning?
• Does cold and flu season prompt systematic sanitize services, even multiple times per day in all common areas?
• Are there days, such as national holidays by which your facility might be closed? If so, these are excellent times for deep cleaning tasks such as floor scrub services, carpet cleaning, HVAC vent cleaning, and like services.
• Establish procedures by which staff performs checks of high traffic areas after busy periods.

Your program should be unique to the specific requirements within your building.  Working with a professional cleaning company with healthcare facility experience can prove quite helpful.

2. Structured Training Is Vital

Standard rotational cleaning services are often outsourced and performed after-hours. Yet, during business operations, internal staff must also perform critical maintenance cleaning services, such as exam rooms after a patient departs.  This presents two distinct training requirements. First, the training program for your outsourced cleaning company. And second, training specifics for your internal staff.  Let’s review both of these.

Internal Staff Operational Cleaning

No doubt, you have highly experienced staff operating your healthcare facility, with a wide set of skills.  And, some of them may be required to partake in operational cleaning duties during business hours.  It’s important to relay the criticality of these tasks through written procedures and continuous training.  These points might help build or mature your internal training program:

• Are the proper cleaning agents being used in the right way and at the right time (more info on this below)?
• During busy times, does operational cleaning become ‘secondary’.  If so, written training should address this.
• What happens during an incident, such as a spill or worse?  Train staff to appropriate procedures.
• How are Terminal Cleanings processed?  Is there a written procedure for these?

Outsourced Vendor Cleaning – Training Review & Transparency

The first step in ensuring a win-win relationship is to choose a commercial cleaning company that specializes in medical office cleaning.  And, they should relay details of this experience to you.

Second, an open and honest discussion of your cleaning company’s healthcare cleaning training program is important.  These topics might facilitate a productive discussion:

• Determine what specific Standard Operating Procedures are in place for medical environment cleaning.  Review with your vendor how they apply specifically to your facility.
• Inquire if 3rd party Bloodborne Pathogen training and certification is provided to company employees.
• Review formal training and re-training procedures.  How is re-training formally handled for corrections?

3. Utilize the Right Cleaning Products

Utilizing the appropriate cleaning agents is critical for safety and effectiveness.  Cleaning product selection should be based on the level of cleaning that is required.  Just as important are the types of surfaces that are being cleaned.  Furthermore, determinations should be made as to all-purpose cleaning vs sanitation vs disinfection. As a simple illustration of this – office partition glass might be cleaned with a standard glass cleaner.  However, would it be appropriate to use standard glass cleaner for terminal cleanings?  No, of course not.  Thus, how and when specific products are used should be defined.

Finally, your commercial cleaning company can work with you to define what products are being used. And, they can source specific cleaning agents per internal requirements.  Working with distributors and manufacturers that supply cleaning agents for healthcare facilities can ensure guesswork is not involved!

JanMasters – Office Cleaning Specialists

JanMasters is a trusted office cleaning company.  We have experience cleaning offices in most industries and settings.  We’re here to build a custom cleaning program for your exact needs and specifications.  Don’t hesitate to Contact Us for more information.  Finally, we thank you for reading our blog article and glad you are concerned with your office cleanliness!

Source: Foremanpro