"Pyxis" for Linens....

[mcdonl]

Have any of you used the automated linen dispensers yet? They are sort of neat, but slow and yet another FOB to carry around. You scan your FOB, and it finds an empty slot, tells you to open the drawer and then dispenses 1 sheet, 1 Blanket, 1 Pillow Case and 1 Towel. Takes about 45 seconds.

Is losing linen a big problem in hospitals?

http://www.thinkipa.com/scrubEx_lv_dispenser.html

It was funny when nursing (Probably the "real" culprits came to the EMS exchange area and tried to get linens and were dispensed 1 stretchers worth at a time... NOT happy!

Sort of cool though. I have been in health care IT/Engineering for a long time and have seen a lot of technology, this is pretty cool.

 

[Dominion]

Not really an issue around here as far as I know. Most nurses don't care you take their linen as long as you aren't taking it all or take the last of it and don't tell anyone. During the summer we tend to just grab a ton of sheets but during the winter we get a TON of blankets and it's generally ok. They know they will get it back one way or another. They tried to print "Property of X Hospital" on the linens before and that didn't work at all.

 

[sq3hjfd]

We have them here, big waste of money in my opinion. What happens when you use multiple sheets, towels, etc. You have to fight to replace them.

 

[johnrsemt]

we always had a 1 to 1 exchange deal with the hospitals. problem we had was 9 hospitals in the county, and the 3 level I trauma centers were getting raided hard, esp from EMS services outside the county, which they seldom got them back.

one hospital was telling me that they were losing about $50,000 of linen a year, even if that was not right, it would still be expensive.

 

[rescue99]

We have them here, big waste of money in my opinion. What happens when you use multiple sheets, towels, etc. You have to fight to replace them.

Seems they'd have more to worry about....like charging patients for things not done and care never rendered.

 

[MMiz]

Working an ambulance, why would you need linens? Doesn't everyone use the disposable kind?

 

[reaper]

We have large steel linen carts that are in the ambulance bay. You take what you need. Almost all the counties and privates pay the hospital a fixed rate every year for linen service.

You dump old linen in bins and take what you need. They are probably spending more on the machines, then they are losing in lost linen.

 

[rescue99]

Working an ambulance, why would you need linens? Doesn't everyone use the disposable kind?

Lots of companies use landfill linens. Just depends on who ya work for.

 

[EMSLaw]

Yes, we have them here. The St. Barnabas hospitals all recently implimented this, as apparently they were losing too much linen each year (from what I hear, mostly to transport companies.)

As for disposable linens... nobody uses them here, as far as I can tell. And in my experience, they stink, and are insufficiently strong to sheet-draw a patient from stretcher to bed.

 

[Sasha]

At the IFT company I work for they will fire you for taking sheets from certain hospitals. Even if the patient is in serious pain you're expected to roll them around onto a flat sheet before transferring them to the stretcher. The sad part is, if the hospital says you took the sheets you are fired, no questions asked, even if the sheets were left in the room. A crew got fired because the hospital said they took sheets even though the patient walked to the stretcher.

Most hospitals don't care, they understand they're going to get the sheets back in a week or so anyway when the patient comes back to the ER

 

[Sasha]

As for disposable linens... nobody uses them here, as far as I can tell. And in my experience, they stink, and are insufficiently strong to sheet-draw a patient from stretcher to bed

We have disposable sheets, I've only had a problem with extremely big patients on them and then it is usually not an issue because they don't fit onto the LBS stretchers.

 

[rescue99]

At the IFT company I work for they will fire you for taking sheets from certain hospitals. Even if the patient is in serious pain you're expected to roll them around onto a flat sheet before transferring them to the stretcher. The sad part is, if the hospital says you took the sheets you are fired, no questions asked, even if the sheets were left in the room. A crew got fired because the hospital said they took sheets even though the patient walked to the stretcher.

Most hospitals don't care, they understand they're going to get the sheets back in a week or so anyway when the patient comes back to the ER

LOL...Henry Ford Hospital has security arrest people who dare snag their linens. It's funny to watch somebody get squeezed over a sheet. I kinda don't blame them as they do have the best around.

 

[JPINFV]

Working an ambulance, why would you need linens? Doesn't everyone use the disposable kind?

Not always. We used disposiable in So Cal, but not MA. However MA was a small company where we almost never ended up at the hospital.

Saying that, the thing with So Cal is that we still needed blankets from time to time (they bought blankets and those got lost fairly quickly) and we still needed linen sheets for sheet transfer. However, we weren't grabbing sheets for use later, it was generally more of taking the patients on the sheets that they were already on. As such, I'm inclined to say that the net sheets lost or gained was minimal since we would bring patients in on sheets, and take them out on sheets.

 

[Epi-do]

All of the local hospitals here have went to the machines. Most of the nurses are pretty good about replacing linen if we use more than the "standard" amount on a patient, but there are a few out there that want to give you a hard time. Of course, if a regular linen cart is found in a hallway, most crews grab what they can to keep an "extra" supply on the truck.

 

[Dominion]

Was talking to a superior here about this earlier today and apparently we also pay a flat fee to the hospital every year for linen service. It's some kind of area thing all the services have contracts saying they will pay a flat fee. It actually goes to a linen company not the hospital from what I understand.

 

[mcdonl]

After doing some digging at work... (I work for the hospital that uses the machine...) the machine is also connected to the linen control system so it automatically places a work order when it is low. We were constantly running low when it was the wire cart.