Laundry like you’ve never seen it before

Doing laundry is an essential part of everyday life. But at Chinook Regional Hospital, they take washing and drying to a whole new level.

“At home you’d probably put in six to ten pounds in your washing machine and wash and dry that,” said Dave Kortt, manager of linen services in Lethbridge and the surrounding area. “Here we do about a thousand pounds an hour.”

The hospital’s laundry facility receives dirty pieces from not only from that facility, but also rural health care sites, long term care facilities and commercial accounts from across the region.

“We process approximately five million pieces per year, over 20,000 pieces per day.”

To start, items are sorted into 130lbs loads and transported to washing machines through an automated system. One of the chutes the loads are dropped into leads to a new, top of line washing machine installed recently in an effort to increase efficiency.

“The facility was originally constructed in 1983, and this was the first major update to this facility in that time,” said Bob Corfield, director of linen and environmental services in South Zone. “So roughly this is an upgrade after thirty years of service.”

Still damp and fresh out of the washing machine, the pieces go through another sorting process. From there they could be loaded into new energy efficient dryers, which since upgrading, have saved approximately one million gallons of water. Washed sheets are loaded onto a specialized machine that irons, dries and folds automatically.

“We want to really minimize the total number of touches on pieces which does these things: one, it’s better ergonomically, it’s better productively, and it’s also better hygienically,” said Corfield.

The smaller articles still need to be folded by hand and examined, especially sensitive materials from the operating room. Once packed away in transportation bins, the thoroughly cleaned items can be sent back to where they’re needed most.

“When a nurse or a patient needs that linen, it’s exactly where they need it and when they need it,” said Corfield. “That’s one of the urgencies of what we do on a daily basis.”