WFHSS Discussion Forum - Reply to Topic 018

Recently there has been a trend to outsource cssd work. in some countrys they outsource linen packing and sterilisation ex Paremeta central laundry and linen packaging facility of Govt of Australia in Sydney. i am strongly against outsourcing. the quality is compromised. i think this is happening because management principles are applied to patient care irrespective of what the end result is. the patient should be centric to any change. the management principles first and foremost help the patient and also save cost. what is happening is save cost irespective of concequence to the patient. one has to realise that patient comes to hospital to get well. his faith in the system should not be distroyed. patient who comes to the hospital should go back home because of us and not in spite of us. i would appreciate if my point is discussed

regards
R G Sawant

Hi

I visited an outsourcing site in Glasow, Scotland and realise that the concept takes away the customer service aspect of patient care out of the process. the technicians becomes industrial workers and are paid less than in hospital techs. Outsourcing from a french company came to Toronto and to my Hospital.
With in house state of the art Green Technology with cost savings i was able to prove that an in house process is much more competitive and beneficial in the long run for the Hospital than outsourcing. i have also wrote a research article to this effect.
it is important to seek the assistance of the Operating room manager, Finance and Infection Control to support your position.

Abdool

Unlike support services such as House Keeping, Laundry or Food Services, CSSD has a big role to play in the quality patient care, and quality assurance of the service provided. CSSD is no more like a "order and obey" workers in the modern scenario, but more often a decision maker and even a source of fruitful recommandations for the chronic infection control related issues. 'Setting a protocol and simply follow it' is what is delivered by most of the outsourcing agencies. In the point of view of standardisation of activities, probably some hospitals may find it a good idea, but they lose the link as far as belongingness and actual involvement of the patient care activity is concerned.

Thanks Mr. Sawant, to bring such a great topic to share their opinion among all the experts within our loop, but I am sure that all of us would agree that outsourcing is not the solution for rational functioning of the department. Stream lining and bringing uniformity of all the activities is part of the departmental management, but it is coming to only a small percentage compared with more important timely decisions and it's implementation strategies.