What the Growing Texas Market Means For Medical Linens

Did you know Texas has more than 430 ambulatory surgery centers with an estimated combined economic impact of nearly $1.7 billion? It also has the second-largest population among US states, with almost 30 million residents, and continues to grow. In response to these upward trends, hospitals and health systems have built new facilities throughout the state at a significant rate. Currently, eight of the 25 largest employers in Texas are either hospitals or research facilities.¹

So, what does all of this mean? More ambulatory surgery centers and outpatient healthcare facilities need to partner with medical apparel and linen service specialists to meet heightened demands—and local access to medical apparel, linen, and laundry services is vital for these healthcare providers to maintain their operations and deliver quality patient care.

Nixon Medical recently expanded its service area to San Antonio, Texas, to provide these outpatient healthcare centers with the necessary supplies and services. This blog discusses the benefits our medical linen and apparel service can provide to the rapidly growing Texas healthcare market.

How Outsourced Medical Linens Services Meet Texas Demand With Major Benefits

Cost-Effective Solutions

The main benefit Texas ambulatory surgery centers and outpatient facilities will experience from the availability of outsourced medical linen and laundry solutions is the impact on their bottom line. For many new facilities, an in-house laundry operation is too costly and complex to maintain. By eliminating the need to purchase linens, uniforms, scrubs, towels, and other items in bulk, these facilities can instead pay a low laundry service fee and allocate more budget to healthcare equipment, machines, diagnostic tools, and more. Without the need to purchase laundry equipment, and implement and operate a compliant laundry program, more space within the facility can be used to treat patients.

Comprehensive Inventory Services

An effective inventory system keeps medical linens and laundry in ambulatory surgery centers and other outpatient healthcare facilities in order. Professional medical linen inventory services include stocking, tracking, organization, and maintenance. Facilities without a rigorous laundry inventory system and on-site support can quickly lose track of what’s clean and what’s not and what belongs where. Medical linen inventory services depend on individualized on-site inventory organization, storage, and processing solutions. Every garment is barcoded and entered into the facility’s system with a handheld scanner, and every piece of medical laundry leaving and entering your facility is tracked.

Tracking ensures an accurate inventory that won’t leave you guessing about how much medical laundry you have and when to expect a pickup or delivery. All garments are tracked by size, wearer, and finishing methods. With this system, new and expanding ambulatory service centers and outpatient healthcare facilities don’t have to manually count inventory or worry about missing scrubs and garments.

Storage Management and Organization

Leading medical linen and laundry service providers make the most of intelligent people, processes, and technologies to ensure clean and orderly location management. In the hands of a professional, healthcare facility storage solutions help even the busiest, most crowded locations stay organized. From OSHA-compliant hampers and ranger racks to secure lockers, flexible storage management solutions can be integrated into any outpatient medical environment. Key items include:

• Regular and premium hampers
• Hanger racks
• Stationary garment rails
• Folded garment lockers
• Standard laundry lockups
• Hanging garment lockers
• Replacement locks

Expert Support From Dedicated Specialists

Staffing a medical laundry program can be challenging for new and expanding ambulatory surgery centers and outpatient facilities. Leading medical laundry and linen service providers solve this challenge and streamline the entire experience for healthcare facilities with the help of dedicated Route Service Representatives (RSRs). As your main point of contact, an RSR works to understand your unique needs and continuously customizes your service levels as those needs change or emergencies arise.

RSRs visit your location regularly to pick up, deliver, and manage your medical linen and apparel, keeping you in the loop at every stage. They clean, inspect, and seal garments in plastic, remove worn or damaged products, and deliver items directly to the facility in a staged, ready-to-use condition.

Professional staging and organization keep outpatient centers cleaner, more presentable, and conducive to providing the best medical care possible. By making linen and garment access fast and easy for clinicians, busy work environments can run more efficiently, improving the overall experience for staff and patients.

Convenient Online Account Management

In today’s world, online account access is a must for maximizing administrative efficiency across all types of outsourced and vendor services. Convenient medical laundry and linen platforms like Nixon Medical Xpress will allow emerging Texas facilities to access account and financial history, manage their accounts, and pay bills quickly and efficiently to save significant time and money.

Free Same-Day Special Deliveries for Unexpected Needs

With the influx of new patients, Texas outpatient centers risk running out of clean linens. Fortunately, the best medical linen and laundry service providers understand that busy outpatient facilities always need adequate supplies. That includes clean and sanitary linens, laundry, and garments. You can’t account for every situation, especially with medical emergencies, but with the support of a professional medical linen and laundry service provider, you have help when challenges arise. In an emergency, your Route Service Representative will be there for you to provide next-day special deliveries at no extra cost.

Choosing the Right Medical Linen and Service Provider

There are many medical linen companies to choose from—but not all are created equal, and many don’t hit all the above elements. Managing new and expanded outpatient facilities like those we see in Texas has many moving parts, and a medical apparel and linens vendor should make managing those parts easier, not harder. Each component can be critical to success, so making the right choice the first time is vital.

Nixon Medical is a leading medical apparel and linens vendor trusted by 10,000+ medical centers nationwide, providing fully managed HLAC-accredited laundry, product fulfillment, and inventory management services, delivered with our industry-recognized Nixon Medical Service Difference™. We have a satisfaction score that is 50% higher than other vendors and attribute this rating to:

• Easy payment solutions
• No minimums required, ever
• Free deliveries for unexpected needs
• Anytime access to Route Service Representative
• Contact-free service model

Building upon our established service areas of Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Virginia, we’ve recently expanded to serve San Antonio, Texas. Contact us for information about starting with Nixon Medical in San Antonio.

1. Healthcare Is Big Business in Texas. March 20, 2019. https://academicpartnerships.uta.edu/articles/mba/healthcare-big-business-in-texas.aspx