March 2014
| Business World Magazine | 127
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, that’s one of
our on-going goals – to make sure that we
are identifying any cooperative healthcare
laundries out there that would qualify for
membership, that are not members, because
we want to make them aware and certainly
let them hear the advantages of membership.
Part of our philosophy is that cooperative
laundries are much better run in the inter-
est of the hospitals if there’s a person that
reports directly to the board of directors. As
opposed to being managed by a management
company, where linen and service is not their
main priority.
BW: What sorts of things are on your agen-
da going forward that you want to accom-
plish? What factors are out there that peo-
ple in your position need to be aware of ?
LARK:
No. 1, I want to grow the organiza-
tion. I want to make sure that we are con-
necting with those qualifying healthcare
cooperatives that are out there, and making
ourselves known to them, so that they have
the ability to take advantage of what our or-
ganization offers. I want to continue to el-
evate the level of education to our members,
making sure we’re keeping up with trends in
the industry and changes in laws. Another
thing I want to do is start having more and
more collaboration with the vendors in the
industry, whether it be equipment, textiles,
chemical vendors or service providers that
are specific to our industry, so that their re-
search and development is addressing what
we’re concerned about.
BW: How will the industry look different
five years from now?
LARK:
I think there’s going to be a lot of
downward pressure to continue to reduce
costs, gain efficiencies. Again certainly with
the healthcare act, it’s yet to be seen. We all
know that’s going to bring some changes.
More and more of the cooperatives are going
to be certainly accredited by theHLAC– the
Healthcare Laundry Accreditation Council.
I think that’s a trend that we’re going to con-
tinue to see grow. I think it’s going to become
more and more of a demand by the hospitals,
that the cooperative doing their linen and
laundry service be accredited. I think those
are some trends we will see changing.
