As the COVID-19 pandemic rolls on with a late-June surge in several southern and western states, an ongoing challenge facing healthcare providers is how to avoid a repeat of the severe shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) that has struck healthcare staff and patients in recent weeks. Laundry operators hope that healthcare providers will learn from this experience the importance of diversifying their supply chains to include more reusable isolation gowns that aren’t reliant on a 6-8-week lead time for deliveries from factories in the Far East. The opportunity is there, say several operators we contacted, but getting hospitals to ...