SANFORD, Fla., Jan. 16, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- RepScrubs, a national company providing time-sensitive vendor attire for infection prevention in hospitals, today announces its partnership with Cypress Creek Outpatient Surgical Center, bringing it to an 80 percent market share in South Florida. Repscrubs prevents infections, reduces costs and manages vendors, or medical device sales representatives, with its unique surgical attire solution. Now, the company is able to help lessen the risk of healthcare-associated infections (HAI) across all 40 of its South Florida locations, such as JFK, Mercy Hospital, Broward Health, Memorial Health, University of Miami, Jackson Health, Holy Cross and more across the nation.
“South Florida is home to some of the most innovative hospital systems in the nation, and we believe this expansion truly signifies a new chapter in infection prevention,” said Jeff Feuer, president and CEO of RepScrubs. “Battling HAIs is a body of work, and while there is no one solution, an effective vendor management program focused on vendor access and proper surgical attire is a major stepping stone to patient safety.”
RepScrubs works through an automated, cashless scrub dispensing unit, or ScrubPort®. Each vendor checks into the ScrubPort® and purchases a personalized security badge and a pre-packaged set of long-sleeved disposable scrubs prior to entering the operating room (OR). To prevent scrubs from re-use, each scrub set is equipped with a time-sensitive badge that bleeds expired after eight hours, showing that particular set of scrubs as “expired.” In addition, RepScrubs generates usage reports to ensure vendor compliance and to assist hospital administrators in managing OR traffic.
Studies have found that following a standard eight-hour work shift, 92 percent of scrubs worn by hospital personnel are carrying dangerous bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant strains of MRSA, VRE and C-Diff. Both MRSA and VRE isolates can survive for up to 90 days on hospital fabrics, and these pathogens cannot be killed through laundry systems found at home.
Unknown to many patients, medical device sales representatives are present during 35 to 40 percent of all surgical procedures and approximately 68 percent of all large bone orthopedic procedures. There are no standardized, universal regulations for this population, and vendors are often granted open access to ORs. Many wear their own home-laundered scrubs while visiting multiple hospitals, visiting public areas, and going back home in one day. While hospitals have policies regarding clean surgical attire, enforcing these policies among visiting surgical vendors has proven difficult. RepScrubs allows hospitals to benefit from vendors’ expertise, have a firm system in place to track OR traffic, limit pathogen transfer and keep patients safe.
“As more complex cases are being introduced to the outpatient environment, it was paramount that we take every preventative measure available in the market for patient safety,” said Liliana Lehmann, founder and president of Axis Healthcare Partners and administrator at Cypress Creek Outpatient Surgical Center. “For us, partnering with RepScrubs was the obvious choice in this process of infection prevention. The types of cases that are moving into ambulatory surgical centers (ASC) are expanding rapidly, and because of that, we need to be prepared for those changes in service lines. Our hope for the future of healthcare is that every health system and ASC will implement all available resources toward being proactive in infection prevention, not reactive.”
About RepScrubs
RepScrubs provides healthcare facilities with time-sensitive vendor attire that improves infection prevention and vendor management protocols, while reducing costs. The RepScrubs system includes real-time vendor tracking reports for hospital staff about who has been to the operating room. For more information, visit http://www.repscrubs.com/.
Contact:
Daniel Tummeley
321.236.0102
dtummeley@uproarpr.com