A partnership between the government and the UK laundry industry is to help the NHS and care homes to put an end to the shortage of PPE gowns and ensure all staff have access to the protective gowns they need.
The idea is a simple one, which has been pushed by the Textile Service Association (TSA), the trade body representing the UK’s commercial laundries, for over two months. Instead of using disposable gowns, healthcare workers, medics and care workers will switch to reusable ones – and UK laundries will clean them hygienically, ready for reuse.
Several NHS Trusts already use reusable PPE gowns successfully. The plan to move to reusable gowns was reported by HEFMA in our feature article ‘Living with COVID-19’. NHS England and NHS Improvement needs to ensure there is sufficient supply of reusable gowns in the system before encouraging Trusts to move to them.
Financially the move also makes sense. The cost per reusable gown is around ten times that of a disposable version, but the reusable one can be laundered and reused between 75 and 100 times. The savings to the NHS are estimated as being as much as £500 million a year. As many as half a million single use gowns are being used every day during the COVID-19 crisis –creating millions of tonnes of clinical waste, which then has to be incinerated.
Laundering half a million reusable gowns a day is a massive operation and not any laundry can do the job, as they need to be hygienically sanitised. Those laundries that already process NHS linen will be up to standard, but they are unlikely to be able to cope with the anticipated increased volumes. The TSA has put together comprehensive guidelines and a certification process, so that hospitality laundries can quickly take up the slack.
“The key for the laundry industry is to mobilise now to ensure we have the capacity and processes in place to service this enormous increase in demand,” says David Stevens, CEO of the TSA. “Without laundries processing to the correct standard there is no point in having reusable gowns.”
The standard that is used within the NHS is HTM01-04, which guarantees the disinfection of the gown. As well as complying with this, laundries involved in the service will have to be able to manage the collection and return of between two and three million gowns a week to thousands of different locations. However, according to David Stevens that won’t be a problem. “We are used to processing 50 million pieces a week for the hotel sector, so we have plenty of capacity and expertise in providing the service required,” he says. “We hope to encourage an additional 30 to 50 laundry sites to go through the certification process to ensure we are ready to support the project when the gowns start to arrive.”
The TSA has been lobbying the government to change to this type of gown not only because is it a much more reliable and cost-effective solution, but also because it is much better for the environment. Disposable gowns create enormous amounts of clinical waste, reusable ones can be recycled at the end of their working life.
“We are delighted that the Government is now moving forward towards the implementation of reusable gowns and we know there are several million currently in manufacture,” says Stevens. “The vision is to have the reusable gowns service available throughout the healthcare market so hospitals, GP surgeries, care homes and nursing homes all have access.”
