Infection Prevention: Best Practices, Inspections & Testing

TRSA President and CEO Joseph Ricci recently was featured in an “Industry Roundtable” on “Healthcare Laundry” that appeared in the Sept. 13 edition of Infection Control Today.

One of the roundtable questions asked “What are the knowledge gaps around healthcare-related infection prevention that persist?”

Ricci responded that a combination of best practices, detailed inspections and microbiological testing of textiles has become a global standard for ensuring safe handling of healthcare textiles. This approach is gaining favor in the United States as well, he said.

“Focusing on mandatory best practices that incorporate a variety of techniques that maximize hygiene makes for a robust inspection process,” Ricci said, adding that “Microbiological testing of clean textiles from the end of the laundry production lines quantifies product cleanliness. This combination of process and outcome measures has long been practiced by the industry across the globe and is catching on here.” Click here to read the article.

These principles are also incorporated into TRSA’s Hygienically Clean certification program. Click here to learn more about Hygienically Clean.

While the infection-control risk from textiles is real, it’s also an extremely rare phenomenon, Ricci said. Since the 1970s, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified only 14 cases worldwide of infections linked to healthcare textiles. That means that the odds of obtaining a healthcare acquired infection (HAI) from textiles is only 1 in 77 million. By comparison, a person is 1,000 times more likely to be struck by lightning than to get an infection by coming into contact with laundered healthcare textiles.