As a medical centre owner or manager, if you’re wondering exactly how many times you should clean your facility or different areas in your hospital, here’s a detailed guide to determining the ideal cleaning frequency for a medical establishment.

Why medical centre cleaning is needed

Medical facilities like hospitals are considered a highly sensitive place with a strong possibility of the spread of infections through disease-carrying patients. And because the average foot traffic on these premises is usually very high, the need for routine cleaning is much higher than in other types of commercial facilities.

Hundreds of patients with different illnesses might be visiting your medical centre every day. They sit on benches, touch surfaces like door handles, tabletops, magazines, water dispensers, etc., and can spread germs in more ways than one can imagine.

To control the possible spread of a harmful infection like the coronavirus in your medical premises and to stop your facility from becoming a breeding house for different infections, you absolutely need a medical cleaning routine.

Other than that, some obvious reasons to maintain cleanliness and hygiene in your hospital include – making a great impression on visitors, improving market reputation, positive word of mouth, business growth, and increasing the property value.

If you want your medical business to stand out from the competition and your patients to feel safe & comfortable when visiting your property, you should hire a professional medical cleaning service in Sydney right away.

If you are concerned about the number of times different areas of your medical premises should be cleaned, here’s our medical cleaning process and routine for your help.

The Ideal Frequency of Medical Centre Cleaning

As you may already know, different areas of a medical centre have different levels of cleaning needs. For instance, the reception and waiting areas will generally receive the highest foot traffic, which means they should be cleaned more frequently than other parts of the property.

Similarly, common toilets and restrooms are used by many people, including patients, throughout the day, so they should be cleaned and disinfected as many times as possible.

Here’s a detailed analysis of the uncleanness levels of different areas in a medical centre and the ideal cleaning frequency accordingly.

Cleaning the Reception & Waiting Halls

The waiting hall is the most critical area in your medical centre in terms of foot traffic. Not only do all visitors to your hospital go through this area but also most of them might be sharing the waiting room at the same time when waiting for their turn to be examined by a doctor.

When waiting in the common space, they are expected to touch multiple surfaces, chairs, armrests, benches, tabletops, counters (at the reception), magazines, water dispensers, switches, etc.

The waiting halls in your medical centre will be shared not only by your patients but also by healthy people who accompany these patients, which means they can easily catch communicable germs from infected surfaces or things that have already been touched or used by a visiting patient.

This is why the waiting areas and halls should be the most priority areas for cleaning in your medical facility. Not only should this be the first place to be cleaned by your medical cleaning services provider but also you should try & get it cleaned as many times throughout the day as possible.

Your reception is also the first thing people encounter when visiting your hospital, so you want to keep it looking clean and presentable at all times.

How often your hospital waiting rooms should be cleaned – Every day (preferably once every few hours), and high traffic prone areas, such as door knobs, chairs, counters, water taps, switches, etc. should be cleaned and disinfected multiple times a day.

Frequency of Restroom Cleaning in a Hospital

Whether it’s a hospital or any other kind of medical centre such as a clinic or a pharmacy, daily cleaning of restrooms is a must, especially if the restrooms are shared or used by multiple people. Here’s why.

The same as the waiting rooms in your medical facility, the restrooms are equally prone to the spread of germs and infections due to higher foot traffic and increased vulnerability.

Toilets are often considered a hotspot for germs and bacteria, and rightly so because it is easier to catch an infection in a toilet than in any other place. You should expect all parts of a toilet, including toilet seats, urinals, sinks, soap dispensers, hand dryers, water taps, toilet flush, etc. to be occupied by millions of germs, which can easily transfer to users upon direct contact and start spreading illnesses before you can do anything to stop them.

But, of course, there is something you can do to stop or prevent it. By getting your hospital toilets deep cleaned and disinfected multiple times a day, you can ensure the safety of your visitors and staff from germs.

The frequency of toilet cleaning will usually depend on the overall foot traffic. The busier the place, the more frequently restrooms should be cleaned. We recommend cleaning the hospital toilets once every couple of hours in a busy place.

In addition to cleaning the toilets and urinals, your medical centre cleaners must also disinfect all touchpoints and high-traffic areas like taps, flush, lids, soap dispensers, switches, etc. multiple times a day.

Medical Examination Room Cleaning – How Many Times a Day?

The examination room is the next place to be included in a medical cleaning service. This place can also have a lot of germs and might even be contaminated if an infected person has come into direct contact with surfaces.

This is why the medical examination room should ideally be cleaned after each exam or between two patients and must be thoroughly cleaned and disinfected at the start and end of the day.

Now, it may not be possible to entirely clean an examination room after every check-up or patient visit, which is why we recommend disinfecting all touchpoints and surfaces that a patient may have come into contact with.

These may include the doctor’s table, chairs, door knobs, handles, etc. The doctor or support staff can keep disinfecting wipes handy and use them to clean surfaces between two patient visits.

In addition, the trash cans should be emptied every few hours and liners should be replaced to get rid of infected disposables such as syringes and other medical waste.

Staff Room Cleaning in a Medical Centre

The staff room, i.e the place where your staff spends their leisure time, must also be routinely cleaned and all surfaces should be disinfected every day depending on foot traffic and frequency of use.

The compartments of individual staff members should be kept clean and their belongings should be kept in a safe place and away from anyone’s reach. The staff room should be strictly restricted only to the hospital staff to avoid unnecessary crowding. Members must be required to use face masks when in a closed room or space.

Disposing of Medical Waste – How and When to Do It?

Medical trash is amongst the most harmful and potentially dangerous waste in the world. The four kinds of medical waste are infectious, hazardous, radioactive, and general.

Everything from medical syringes to blood-soaked cotton, bodily fluids, waste paper, diapers, infected waste from autopsies and patient waste can contribute to the spread of infections on the premises.

This is why it is crucial that all medical waste from all around your property is routinely and properly disposed of following the standard medical waste disposal practices. We recommend emptying and cleaning all trash can at least twice every day, or more often depending on use. The liners should also be replaced every time after cleaning.

Professional cleaners of a medical cleaning company like Clean Group know how to properly and safely handle medical waste to reduce the probability of contamination.

Medical Deep Cleaning vs Terminal Cleaning

In addition to routine cleaning of medical premises, which involves sweeping, vacuuming and/or mopping everything, all surfaces, floors, toilets, staff rooms, exam rooms, etc.

And disinfecting all touchpoints, you should also consider getting your healthcare facility deep cleaned once a month or so. This is because many areas, hard-to-reach places and corners are often missed in routine cleaning, which can be covered in deep cleaning.

A typical deep medical centre cleaning service by a professional agency like Clean Group will cover cleaning every spot deeply and disinfecting using high-quality, eco-friendly products to achieve a high level of hygiene maintenance.

We follow a medical cleaning checklist to ensure no spot is missed. We also completely sanitise the entire property from corner to corner to reduce and kill off germs.

Terminal cleaning is a type of medical cleaning performed to break the chain of medical infections or Hospital Acquired infections (HAI), as they are officially called.

For instance, when the coronavirus pandemic happened, hospitals immediately became a hotspot for the virus, because hundreds of infected people were visiting these places for treatment and unwillingly contributed to the spread of infections to healthy persons, including medical staff and relatives of other patients.

Terminal cleaning or decontamination cleaning is done in such a case to fully clean and decontaminate the entire property to remove all traces of the virus and prevent any further spread of infections.

Medical terminal cleaning requires specific expertise and extensive training to adequately clean and disinfect concerned areas without contributing to further spread.

Cleaners at Clean Group are trained for medical facility cleaning and decontamination and also provide covid-19 cleaning services to many property owners all over Sydney. You can contact us to know more or for a free quote for medical cleaning services in Sydney NSW.

About the Author