Tracey Fletcher, business director for UK care homes at Berendsen, explains how outsourcing laundry can provide a more effective and reliable alternative to in-house operations as care home providers work to boost performance while improving efficiency
The care home sector is in a period of immense pressure and faces significant challenges over the next couple of years. Squeezed by local authority budget cuts, the increase in the national living wage and the demands of an ageing population, businesses are being forced to improve efficiency and cut costs, all while continuing to provide the highest level of care for vulnerable residents.
For many nursing or residential homes, the key to success during this challenging time may lie in identifying where performance can be improved without compromising on the quality of the service offered. The simplest way to go about this is by establishing where there are inefficiencies that can be tackled in the operation of a home. One area that is proving especially problematic for many UK care homes is managing laundry, specifically on-site setups, as doing so in-house can be a particularly time consuming, costly and labour intensive task.
In-house laundry systems may simply be ineffective. Reliability is also a concern as machine breakdowns cannot be predicted. Considering washing and drying machines are used on a daily basis for essential tasks, it is no surprise that for many care homes machine failures are a significant issue for staff, business owners and residents
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