April 2015
| Business World
143
care and wellbeing.
“Healthcare is changing and becoming more
outpatient care and there are more surgery
centers. Therefore a cooperative laundry or
a healthcare laundry in today’s industry will
not survive, sole processing hospital laun-
dry,” Berge said.
Guided by a Board of Directors represent-
ing various healthcare organizations in the
region, Shared Hospital Services provides
economies of scale that help their long-
standing partners secure services, savings,
efficiencies and enhanced safety measures
through automation and mechanical tech-
nology implementation.
New to the position, Berge has begun to in-
still his philosophy within the organization.
“We’ve been going through a maintenance
push for the last eight months. This has
entailed getting the equipment back up
to where it needs to be,” he said. “We have
the automation and have added individual
pieces to help us become more productive.
Although old technology but new to us –
the RFID chipping of specialty garments
and specialty products ensures we can better
serve our customers with accountability of
product.“
“We want to protect ourselves, also,” Berge
continued. “If the customer has something
that they’re purchasing and they want us
to wash as a specialty good, we can track it
and know that it arrived at the laundry and
we delivered it back. We are looking at that
kind of technology.”
HEALTHCARE LAUNDRY
ACCREDITATION COUNCIL
(HLAC)
Handling and processing more than 15 mil-