Linen shortage goes from serious to critical

Asante has only a few days’ supplies of hospital linens on hand, and disposables are going fast. Environmental Services departments are urging extreme conservation to maintain enough linens for patient care.

Southern Oregon Linen Services, Asante’s linen supplier, has suffered staffing shortages in recent months, and many of its deliveries are at half capacity.

Despite this, the linen room at ARRMC reports seeing wasteful practices. Unused linens, still folded and stacked, have appeared in soiled laundry piles, and staff is taking two or three warming blankets at a time instead of using Bear Huggers for patients.

Employees are encouraged to take the following measures until further notice:

• Change beds only as needed or on patient request.
• Avoid dropping off clean linens for daily bed changes.
• Refrain from storing clean linens in patient rooms.
• Use sheets rather than blankets when appropriate.
• Make beds using one bottom sheet, one top sheet, one spread and one pillow case.
• Limit use of scrubs and uniforms to OR, sterile procedural areas and sterile processing.

“We are sorry for the continuing inconvenience,” said Angela Brown, who manages the linen room at ARRMC, “but whatever we can do to save linens until SOLS’s staffing issue improves would be so helpful.”