Using key standards in terminal cleaning procedures can reduce the spread of infection through your medical office environment.

Without close adherence to key cleaning standards, potentially dangerous pathogens can remain on the surfaces in your medical office environment for weeks or even months. With just a single touch, pathogens may spread across an entire building, causing harmful infections to develop in patients, visitors, and employees. These preventable infections affect nearly 750,000 hospital patients per year and lead to excessive rectification costs totaling billions of dollars annually across the entire industry.

You can actively prevent the spread of infections (and markedly decrease the resulting expenses) by hiring professionals well versed in terminal cleaning services.

Visible Soil Cleanup

Visible soils, from bodily fluids in particular, must be immediately and thoroughly cleaned up to keep your medical office free of infectious substances. Cleaning professionals must wipe up the bulk of a mess before spraying down the area with a strong disinfectant. After wiping the area once, a secondary application of disinfectant can help ensure that all the germs have been eliminated. Specialty wipes infused with less than one percent of sodium hypochlorite (bleach) can kill the most harmful environmental pathogens, including norovirus and C. difficile, making them the disinfectant of choice for medical offices. Depending on the surface you are cleaning, another good choice for inactivating C. difficile spores is Peridox, a non-bleach sporicidal disinfectant which eliminates the potential surface and equipment damage that repeated exposure to bleach can cause.

Disinfection of Touch Points

Although cleaning up visible soils is of vital importance in a medical setting, the vast majority of germs lie in wait on seemingly clean surfaces. These germs, including gram negative bacteria, end up on inconspicuous surfaces through brief touch by medical staff, visitors, and patients. Experts trained in medical office cleaning procedures will wipe down all suspected touch points with a disinfectant solution to kill the viruses and bacteria multiplying on said surfaces.

The high touch points in a medical office may include:

• Door knobs
• Bedrails
• Light switches
• Computer equipment
• Tray tables
• IV pumps
• Sinks
• Areas around toilets in patient areas

Disinfecting these surfaces dramatically reduces the spread of infection between patients, staff, and visitors. The utilization of a touch point checklist can ensure that your cleaning professionals always wipe down all important areas before welcoming the next patient into a room.

Care Item Replacement Guide

Disposable and washable care items must be replaced between patients to prevent spread of hospital-induced infections across your medical facility. Bedsheets, pillows, and blankets should be placed in the laundry bin after each patient leaves the room to facilitate disinfection. Courtesy patient care bins, including emesis basins, toothbrushes, and tissue boxes, should all be removed and replaced, even if the prior patient did not seem to utilize those items.

Acquiring Medical Office Cleaning Services

To mitigate the risk of health-care associated infection in patients, visitors, and staff, you can benefit from acquiring cleaning services from the top experts in the field. For professional terminal cleaning services, contact the team at ServiceMaster Twin Cities by navigating to the online quote request form or calling 877-461-1774. After receiving your quote, you can set up the cleaning services that will best support the healthcare goals you have established for your medical office environment.