Crucial service

20 October 2021



LCN asked the UK’s and Ireland’s largest supplier of laundry chemicals solutions to comment on the omplexities of managing healthcare linen. Christeyns business development director, Dave Benson


The provision and laundering of healthcare linen has always been a crucial service, primarily from a hygiene perspective but also in terms of timely supply. Nothing has tested this more than Covid 19. In Europe the system for good hygiene in commercial cleaning is controlled by Risk Analysis Bio-contamination Controls (RABC). The European Standard BS EN 14065 requires the implementation of a RABC plan.

The aim of any RABC plan is to consistently assure the microbial quality of processed textiles through a laundry, so that they are clean and safe for their intended purpose, for their intended customer, and to objective standards. In other words, operating an RABC plan is how laundries ensure they produce safe-for-use textiles and prove this capability to their customers and markets, day after day and year after year. The RABC approach can be employed in any market but is most widely used in technical and regulated markets, including healthcare linen (in concert with HTM 01-04).

At the onset of the pandemic in the UK, laundries experienced around a 25% drop in demand during the first peak as hospitals cancelled operations and moved patients out. But following this first peak a massive increase in foul and infected ‘red bag’ work led to increased processing pressures and additional cost to the launderers.

Changes occurred in textile demand and processing. There was a decrease in flat linen due to reduced patient numbers but an increase in scrub suits due to multiple changes to comply with the new SSOW (safe systems of work). Also, the introduction of reusable isolation gowns for laundries to process.

Celtic scores

Celtic Linen, based in Co. Wexford, Ireland, is one of the largest suppliers of linen and commercial laundry services to the healthcare and hospitality industries in Ireland, delivering over one million freshly laundered items per week.

Fortunately, when Covid came along, dealing with healthcare was already second nature from a chemical and risk analysis standpoint for the laundry. Joanne Somers, chief executive, comments: “Our laundry was already fully set up to manage this type of product, operating to RABC EN14065 standard. It was the change in the mix of product that was the challenge. We experienced a 70-80% increase in scrubs in the first lockdown and a 120% increase in early 2021.

“There was also a need to source additional product to ensure a continuous supply to our healthcare customers, and with the added complication of Brexit we had to be several steps ahead all the time. There is no scope for error, if hospitals need supply you can’t say no, it’s a life or death situation.”

Pre-Christmas, due to an increase in hospital admissions, the laundry needed to operate seven days a week for the whole of December, including Christmas Eve. Under normal working practices there is more flexibility, but interactions and staff movement had to be limited with Covid working protocols in place.

The laundry was dealing with Covid-infected linen every day. Prior to the pandemic around 13% of linen handled required special processing, in the third lockdown it was up to 42%, all of which needed to be washed twice. Managing plant machinery and productivity was all unpredictable and dependant on what happened day to day in the hospitals.

Every aspect had to be managed and with restricted access in hospitals it was hard to ensure product was being returned and that the right linen mix was available when needed. Laundries like Celtic rely heavily on partnerships with suppliers and we have worked even closer with our customers this past eighteen months to ensure supply and provide advice on chemical usage and application. Laundry dosing management systems are hugely important for healthcare, monitoring loads through the tunnel, measuring thermal disinfection and accuracy must be spot on.

Also, like our customers, we at Christyens had to ‘reinvent’ our service visit content to make sure we limited contact and risk, whilst maintaining our customers operations. Validation of the wash process became much more important with temperature and chemical checks being carried every visit.

More discussions took place with customers about the biocidal properties of chemicals and processes and new risk assessments and procedures were put in place.



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