Unreliable Practices followed by Medical Commercial Cleaners in Hospital Grade Cleaning

Hospitals and other medical centres are required to have the highest standards of cleanliness and sanitization. No cleaning service provider can afford to make mistakes or provide substandard cleaning solutions, equipments or products. If this is the case, this can seriously compromise the health of the patients and or also cause short term and long-term dangers in the medical facility. 

In spite of knowing the dangers, some commercial cleaning service providers continue to provide sub-standard and unreliable cleaning practices that greatly undervalue the industry they operate in. Some of these dangers are-

• Lack of proper cleaning plan:

Hospital-grade cleaning requires a great deal of planning and preparation. Hospital is a place of cross-contamination, the spread of infection and a place where immunocompromised individuals walk in and out daily. So, it is important to have a fool-proof and independent cleaning plan for every hospital unit. This also includes documentation for incident reporting and risk mitigation. In the case of the non-availability of these plans, it leaves the cleaning team unprepared for and clueless in the case of an emergency often leading to staff and patients at risk. This can also lead to the spread of superinfections and cross contaminations of surfaces. 

Having a fool-proof cleaning plan and documentation ensures that there is a –

• Plan to stop the spread of infection and contamination – mainly by an emphasis on High Touch Point (HTP) cleaning.
• Plan to treat spillages and surfaces with the right cleaning equipments and chemicals.
• Method to address and map out any specific areas of risk individually.

• Compromise on price:

The reason for a higher price range for medical-grade cleaning is because of its intensity of effort required, value it provides, comprehensiveness and great standards provided. If any of these are compromised, it might lead to lower pricing thus lower value in the service. However, medical or hospital-grade cleaning is not one area where quality or value has to be compromised as this can lead to a myriad of problems in the long-run like – need for specialised decontamination and sanitisation programs to rectify the errors, spread of infections and contaminations and eventually leading to compromised health of patients and employees who are very vulnerable in a medical and health care setting. 

• Using wrong products:

Before choosing a cleaning product it is important to understand the pathogen risk (an organism that causes disease) to your facility. Most of these organisms, if not cleaned out and sanitised thoroughly, compromise the immunity in people who are already sick. 

In hospital-grade cleaning, one cleaning agent may not be able to effectively clean all types of pathogens. So, it is important to have the knowledge, training and technical know-how on how to clean these. Using cheaper or ‘reduced-quality’ cleaning and disinfectant products should not be encouraged here as it could cause serious damages to the occupants and the medical facility as a whole. When training is provided to cleaning technicians for medical set-up cleaning, it is important to emphasise finding and using the right compatibility of disinfectants with cleaning tools so as to not cause dangerous reactions and adverse effects on the site.

• Air pollution control:

This is an often ignored or overlooked aspect in hospital-grade or medical cleaning. There are a number of pollutants that cause poor air supply and circulation in a facility and oftentimes this includes cleaning products. A poor cleaning service provider will often ignore this and use products that have high VOC content like a great deal of air-refreshers. The service provider also lacks appropriate equipment like use of proper air-filtration in their vacuum cleaner, using cleaning tools that do not sufficiently trap dust but rather disperse it, etc. These are some big red-flags and a High-Performance Cleaning program ensures that-

• HEPA filtration fitted vacuum cleaners to stop dust and allergens from re-entering the air.
• Use of clean and wet microfiber cleaning cloths for different surfaces which ensures that the dust is trapped without dispersing it. 
• Use greener and more sustainable cleaning products especially lesser smell causing air-refreshers as these are known to cause harshness on breathing and other health issues.

Some of the ways to ensure effective cleaning systems in the medical centres and hospitals are through- 

• Written cleaning protocols and policies should be available specifically for every site including methods and frequency of cleaning, policies for the supply of all cleaning and disinfectant products and documentation for incident reporting and risk mitigation
• Avoidance of overuse of aerosols and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
• All cleaning items should be changed after each use and cleaned and dried before being used again. Single-use cleaning items are of greater preference, especially in hospital-grade cleaning. 
• No undocumented or unauthorised mixing of cleaning and sanitisation products.
• All cleaning solutions should be prepared just fresh and immediately before use. 
• All workplace health and safety instructions should be followed. 
• Work surfaces and all visibly soiled and spills should be cleaned up as soon as practically possible. 
• All wet equipments like buckets and mops should be emptied after use, washed and rinsed in hot water and stored dry. 
• The following areas like toilets, sinks, washbasins, baths and shower cubicles, fittings attached to showers, baths and hand basins and surrounding floor and wall areas should be cleaned daily and more frequently as required. 
• All healthcare facilities cleaners should have policies and procedures in place for the correct management and disposal of all waste generated. This has to be communicated and provided training to the cleaning service providers for their perusal too.