Environmental service (EVS) professionals work to keep healthcare organizations clean for everyone from patients to clinical staff to visitors to the EVS professionals themselves. These services are necessary to the function of any healthcare facility, but it’s not uncommon for a healthcare system to contract more than one EVS partner to handle the needs of individual facilities. Here are five ways that standardizing EVS across a healthcare system can transform your facility for the better.
Reduces Variability in Service Quality
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It’s hard to guarantee the same high-quality cleaning and disinfection protocols across multiple EVS vendors because you’re working with different representatives who might have different standards than what your facilities actually need When you choose just one effective EVS vendor, you’re better able to establish and enforce the cleanliness standards for housekeeping for hospital systems while keeping the protocols consistent across the entire health system.
Reduces Costs
The cost of EVS vendor contracts can vary widely, depending on how many professionals you contract and the exact services they perform. When you have two or more EVS vendors who serve your health system, you could be paying more for low quality in one place and even more for good quality in another place. You could standardize costs and even save money when you choose one provider who can offer a flat fee per facility, making budgeting that much simpler.
Promotes Patient, Staff, and Visitor Safety
The CDC reports that approximately one in 31 hospital patients contract a healthcare-associated infection (HAI) every day in the U.S. One vendor having control over the guaranteed quality of services means you can trust that your facilities meet the same hospital cleaning standards. This promotes safety within healthcare facilities by reducing accidental contamination or transmission, efficiently taking care of hazards, and presenting a sanitary and welcoming environment for all.
Improves Patient Experiences and Outcomes
When your healthcare facility can better meet cleaning standards that prevent HAIs and make patients more comfortable during their stay, patients can better recover. EVS professionals can impact the patient experience because they often interact with patients when they go to clean their rooms. A vendor that has trained its EVS team members to effectively and openly communicate with patients can fortify patients’ trust in the facility’s dedication to keeping a safe and clean environment.
Better Supports Clinical Staff
Having just one vendor means your clinical staff is famailar with one group of skilled EVS professionals instead of having to coordinate with team members of different vendor companies. When EVS professionals are dispatched to an emergency, a clinical staff member doesn’t have to compromise their patient care duties to wait for the situation to be handled they can be sure the EVS professional will take care of it which improves EVS-clinical staff collaboration.
When your healthcare facility utilizes just one EVS vendor instead of multiple, you can effectively manage patient experiences, staff effectiveness, minimize HAI transmission rates, and uphold your health system’s overall reputation. Choosing an EVS provider with proven recruiting, training, and relationship-building processes can further improve your hospitals cleanliness and effectiveness.
