HOUSTON — Providing linen services for the Memorial Hermann Health System in the Houston area is a monumental task.

The Linen Services team provides essential items — including towels, surgical gowns, scrubs, and even sterile surgery packs — to 14 major hospitals.

Operating six days a week, their behind-the-scenes work ensures surgeons are ready to operate, nurses are equipped to care for patients, and patients remain safe and comfortable.

Earl Smith has been working in the system’s laundry service for more than three decades, and today is director of the entire operation. He and his team of employees work hard at maintaining high standards of quality and ensuring the health system’s facilities always have clean linens in order to be fully operational.

“I’m fortunate that I have a very good team,” he says. “They are very supportive of me, very supportive of the system. Our goal for the system is, this is our laundry. This is for Memorial Hermann, and everything we can do to make a patient comfortable in their stay, we’re going to do it.”

“The importance of our Linen Services team, led by Earl Smith, truly cannot be overstated,” says Malisha Patel, senior vice president and CEO of Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital and Memorial Hermann Sugar Land Hospital. 

“While their incredible work often happens behind the scenes, it is fundamental to every aspect of our hospital operations, from infection prevention and patient comfort to the seamless execution of critical medical procedures.”

Smith stresses that the reason for the success of Memorial Hermann’s Linen Services is the people who work for him.

“I have a very good maintenance staff that has some experience. They all have a good mindset,” he shares. “Customer service is No. 1. I know a lot of people say that, but we live it here. I just can’t say enough about them. All of them have their strong points, but they’re just an excellent staff. I have a chief engineer who’s been with us for quite a while, very knowledgeable and does an excellent job. 

“All of my managers are capable of running, and when I say running, my managers are capable of operating machinery at the production levels that we require from our employees. You don’t see that in our field. The employees realize that. They appreciate that.”

Smith says that’s the way his father trained him to be a leader in the laundry business.

“There was a training session I had to do with Dad, and it wasn’t just me. It was my brother and my uncle. We had the full family involved. His training was that we had to go to each individual station within the laundry. We had to perform as well, if not better than, the person who operated the machine,” Smith says. “It wasn’t just for an hour; it was for a week. We had to perform at the level that we were at. 

“Once we were able to do that, then we were able to go to the next section and learn how to do that. So, we had to feed sheets as fast. We had to feed pillowcases as fast. All three of us had to do it. 

“Back then, we didn’t have a lot of automated folders and stuff, so you were folding hot off the ironer. It was an experience.”

Smith says he uses a similar type of training at Memorial Hermann Linen Services today. 

“When I first got here, some of the managers didn’t know how to fully operate machines. They knew how to feed, but they’d never fed on an ironer, or they’d never fed a towel machine or something like that,” he points out. “I enlisted them to operate that machine and perform what we expected out of them.”

Smith’s training has helped ensure the quality of the laundry processing done in the plant, and his focus on cleanliness assures that the linens remain clean.

“Housekeeping is paramount in the laundry,” Smith says. “Of course, you’ve got your lint issues that need to be addressed daily, just like cleaning the floors or cleaning the equipment or whatever. I’ve got eight housekeeping employees that go around sweeping the floor, cleaning, taking care of rejects, that type of thing.”

Check back Thursday for the conclusion about how adapting to changes makes the team the “unsung heroes” of the health system.

Click HERE for part 1 about Memorial Hermann Linen Services’ operation and its veteran director.