10 | IAHTM
management staff into stronger leaders and
providing opportunity for their personal and
professional growth. For example, our plant
supervisors, HR managers, and engineers
have attended some of these conferences
when the specific subject matter relates to
their specific organizational role. The larger
conference, which is the executive educa-
tional conference, will be held in Salt Lake
City this coming September. That’s a longer
five-day conference and that’s really where
the C-suite education comes in.
BW: Talk to me about the current mem-
bership.Howhavenumbers been trending?
You mentioned the 750 million pounds
figure, but in terms of how many entities
you have as members, where has that been
going in the past couple of years?
LARK:
We’re really focused on growing
our membership. It has grown slightly over
the past five years. We’ve brought in sever-
al new members – I think we are about 45
members at this point in time. And again,
there are some very specific criteria and re-
quirements in order to qualify as a member
of IAHTM.
BW: What is the typical entity that’s a
member? Or is there a typical?
LARK:
Yes. Membership is limited to
those organizations that are formed and op-
erated for the purpose of providing shared
laundry and textile services to two or more
hospitals or healthcare institutions; are
owned by governed by or under the control
of one or more hospitals or healthcare insti-
tutions recognized by the IAHTM Board
as qualifying hospitals or healthcare institu-
tions; and which have a management, own-
ership and control arrangement which is
consistent with other members and is not a
broad based contract management arrange-
ment for independent or unrelated custom-
ers. The management must report directly to
a Board of Directors and be independent of
any contract management company.
BW: Are there a lot of entities that
would fit your membership, but aren’t part
of it? Do you have a pretty good share of
what’s out there or are you still scratching
the surface?
LARK:
We have a pretty good share.
There are still some entities out there, and
that's one of our goals, certainly to reach
out to those qualifying organizations. As
president of IAHTM and certainly the past
presidents of IAHTM and our executives,
