3 Reasons that Long-Term Care Facilities are Outsourcing Laundry

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Many residential care facilities assume that if you want something done cheap, you have to do it yourself. Unfortunately, this simply isn’t true in the case of their immense laundering needs. Costs are rising, and your on-site laundry may not be able to survive.

So, many long-term care facilities are turning to independent, professional medical laundry facilities to lower costs and get more consistent results. Here are just a few motivating factors behind this trend:

1. Minimum wage hikes.

Many residential facilities depend on minimum-wage workers to process the enormous amounts of bedding, clothing, and other textiles needed to run a long-term care facility. But with an increasing minimum wage, keeping these workers on will increase the costs of an on-site laundry.

A recent study by RTI International assessed the effects of wage increases for long-term care providers. Examining minimum wage levels of $10, $12 and $15, they found that providers would experience total cost increases of 1%, 5%, and 13%, respectively. These high wages might not have hit your area yet, but the national trend favors increasing minimum wages in the near future.

2. Decreased government reimbursement for care.

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation study in 2016, Medicaid and Medicare are the primary payers of nursing home care for over 75% of long-term care residents in the United States, and these programs are only going to continue to grow. Medicaid is expected to grow by 6% annually, hitting $650 billion in 2027, and Medicare’s hospital insurance fund will be insolvent by 2026.

But what does that mean for you? It means that government payments for resident care are likely to drop soon, which will decrease your revenue.

3. Increasing regulations will drive up operational costs.

We’ve seen it time and time again. One long-term care facility messes up, and the fallout from that incident affects all of the long-term care facilities that are already providing excellent care, leading to more and more restrictions. For example, the Florida nursing home in 2017 where several patients died due to heat exposure resulted in several new laws governing long-term care facilities.

The truth is, compliance costs money. Combined with increased fine levels and an expansion of CMS infection control requirements, long-term care facilities can expect regulatory costs to pile up fast.

Outsourcing your residential laundry is more cost-effective.

Based on a study of long-term care facilities, on-premise laundry costs can be 30% higher than the cost of outsourcing. And that’s not even counting the other benefits that come along with outsourcing, like more sustainable laundry practices, increased space in your facility for other uses, and more time to focus on non-laundry-related management of your long-term care business.

If you’re interested in outsourcing your long-term care facility laundry, contact Medico Professional Linen Service today. We can schedule a free assessment to help you make the best decision for your business. We’ll come directly to your facility, evaluate the costs of your laundry operations, and give you an idea of what you can save by switching to Medico.

To get started, give us a call today at 800-464-6334, email us at info@medicolinen.com or fill out our simple online contact form, and one of our representatives will contact you to set up your free assessment.