CHICAGO – The laundry administrators and managers who responded to this month’s American Laundry News Wire survey expressed little interest in having their facilities independently accredited or certified by third-party organizations, according to the survey data.
Just 8.3% of respondents reported that their textile services operation is accredited or certified in some way by an organization independent from their own. Another 8.3% said they were “not sure.” The remaining 83.3% reported having no such accreditation or certification.
Organizations such as the Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council (HLAC) and the Textile Rental Services Association (TRSA) can certify laundry facilities as being in compliance with industry standards and protocols. Respondents who reported their facilities as accredited/certified said this standing came from HLAC and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP).
Roughly 42% of respondents said that they are “currently seeking” to receive accreditation/certification, or to renew accreditation/certification, within the next year. The remaining 58.3% are not.
Approximately 18% of respondents believe that accreditation/certification offers their operation benefits that it would not otherwise receive, and another 18.2% are unsure. The remaining 63.6% don’t believe accreditation/certification offers benefits.
Do you think independent accreditation/certification of laundry facilities should be mandatory in the United States? Only 16.7% of respondents believe that it should, while 66.7% say no. The remaining 16.7% “don’t know” if accreditation/certification should be mandatory.
While the Wire survey presents a snapshot of readers’ viewpoints at a particular moment, it should not be considered scientific.
Subscribers to Wire e-mails—distributed twice weekly—are invited to take the industry survey anonymously online each month. All managers and administrators of institutional/OPL, cooperative, commercial and industrial laundries are encouraged to participate, as a greater number of responses will help to better define operator opinions and industry trends.
