158 | Business World Magazine |
October 2013
commercial laundries. In order to offset
costs and better focus on core services in
the treating of patients, numerous health-
care leaders have outsourced laundry op-
erations to other companies, but in other
cases, healthcare providers have set aside
competitive interests to establish co-ops
which could effectively respond to their
respective needs, and Columbus, Ohio, is
home to one of the most dynamic of any
in the industry.
Some years ago, principals from
Mount Carmel Health System and Ohio-
Health System came together to estab-
lish COMTEX (Central Ohio Medical
Textiles), a healthcare textile supply and
laundry service that has since grown to
serve more than two dozen area hospi-
tals, as well as another 125 ancillary sites
ranging from clinics to surgery centers.
COMTEX offers one of the industry’s
most comprehensive catalogs of textile
resources vital to healthcare operations,
and from its 100,000 square-foot facil-
ity in Columbus, it annually processes
more than 31 million pounds of laundry.
As for the crucial function of such opera-
tions, COMTEX Chief Operating Officer
