Nowhere does cleanliness matter more than in a healthcare facility. It is estimated that 2 million patients acquire secondary infections as a result of time spent in a hospital or other medical complex. These infections can be extremely dangerous and constitute a significant obstacle to a patient’s care and recovery journey.
Recent studies have demonstrated that hospital flooring surfaces often contribute to an increased risk of infection. The reason is that high-touch objects in patient rooms regularly come into contact with the floor. These surfaces can then become contaminated by bacteria and other pathogens.
Subsequently, it is critical that healthcare facilities invest in reliable and effective professional tile floor cleaning machines to clean and sanitize their tile floors. Let’s explore some of the best tools for cleaning hospital floors and discuss the benefits of leveling up your cleaning routine.
Why Invest in Professional Tile Floor Cleaning Machines?
Different patients require different standards of care. But at minimum, all patients deserve to receive medical treatment in a controlled environment that reduces the risk of secondary infections caused by environmental hazards.
To reduce the prevalence of healthcare-associated infections, experts recommend a multi-layered approach to floor cleaning and maintenance that combines regular daily cleaning with periodic restorative maintenance.
More traditional floor cleaning approaches like sweeping and mopping often fail to effectively reduce the presence of pathogens, viruses, and bacteria. Cleaning with string mops, for example, often involves re-using the same dirty water throughout multiple cleaning areas. Moving dirty water around on the floor hardly eliminates environmental hazards and can actually increase the presence of these harmful particles.
What Are Some Common Cleaning Challenges Faced by Hospitals?
Cleaning crews tasked with maintaining healthcare facilities are faced with a number of unique challenges. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most common challenges associated with cleaning your floors in hospitals.
Hospitals Must Meet High Standards
Hospitals are held to uniquely high standards when it comes to their cleanliness. There are numerous stringent standards and guidelines that healthcare facilities must adhere to when developing their maintenance routine.
Hospitals must be able to stand up to the harsh scrutiny of organizations like the CDC, OSHA, and the Association of Operative Registered Nurses (AORN). Many of the guidelines established by these organizations specify the kinds of equipment that hospitals must use as part of their cleaning protocols.
If a hospital’s existing commercial cleaner equipment does not comply with these standards, it may be necessary for the cleaning crew to replace, upgrade, or otherwise modify their cleaning supplies.
Hospitals Have Large Footprints
The average hospital in the U.S. is over 350,000 square feet. Each and every square foot of these facilities must be meticulously maintained to deliver the best possible patient care.
More traditional cleaning methods are generally insufficient for tackling large-scale cleaning jobs like hospital sanitation and maintenance. The hospital cleaning process can be time-consuming and labor-intensive, which tends to impact the hospital’s bottom line.
Attempting to achieve quality floor cleaning with traditional cleaning methods likely poses too big a challenge for an average-sized cleaning crew. For this reason, it is recommended that healthcare facilities invest in high-capacity tile and grout cleaning machines that are designed to tackle large jobs quickly, efficiently, and with less manual labor.
Patients Have High-Level Needs
As we’ve already discussed, patients in healthcare settings are often more susceptible to secondary infections during their stay in a hospital. This fact alone necessitates enhanced cleaning protocols that are designed to mitigate the spread of these infections.
Environmental pathogens can linger in the grout of a tile floor and can be easily spread throughout a healthcare facility as patients, visitors, staff, and equipment move throughout the complex.
Additionally, some patients experience mobility issues, and properly maintaining a tile floor can reduce the incidence of dangerous trip-and-fall accidents. Tile floors are relatively easy to maintain with the right equipment, but they can be particularly hazardous if they are not adequately cleaned and serviced.
What is the Best Hospital Tile Floor Cleaning Machine?
Now that we’ve established why it’s so important to invest in high-quality cleaning equipment, let’s discuss which kinds of machinery are best suited for the job.
Intelligent Design Manufacturing (IDM) manufactures advanced cleaning solutions for modern healthcare facilities. Our line of floor scrubbers is uniquely capable of delivering a next-level clean without requiring additional resources or labor.
Manual Floor Scrubbers
IDM’s X-Scrub line of floor scrubbers starts with the manual machines: the X-Scrub Mini and the X-Scrub Pro. Each of these machines folds and swivels for easy transport and maneuverability throughout a job site.
These floor scrubbers distribute water and cleaning solution onto a tile floor and use arrangements of rotating scrub brush heads to remove dirt, debris, and bacteria from the tile and grout lines. The contaminated water can then be squeegeed and vacuumed up into the machine’s reservoir to prevent the spread of germs within the cleaning area.
Users can easily push these machines throughout a space, and the ergonomic design of the floor scrubber allows for easy navigation around corners and other tight spots.
Walk-Behind Floor Scrubbers
The X-Scrub line from IDM also includes walk-behind floor scrubber models, the X-Scrub 20 and X-Scrub Max 20. These machines are self-propelled, so a crew member does not need to operate them or manually push them throughout the cleaning area.
IDM’s walk-behind scrubbers are rechargeable and cordless, so they can run freely during cleaning projects unencumbered by unwieldy cords or battery packs.
The basic functionality of these walk-behind scrubbers is the same as the functionality of the manual models. However, these machines are industrial-sized and designed to deliver a more high-capacity clean with less manual effort. The result is your crew saves a tremendous amount of time performing their duties.
Ride-On Floor Scrubbers
For large cleaning jobs, we offer a line of heavy-duty ride-on floor scrubbing machines. The X-Scrub Rider 28, X-Scrub Rider 32, and X-Scrub Rider 36 all offer users the ability to drive their floor scrubber throughout a large job site.
Users can choose the cleaning path that best suits their space, thus allowing them to navigate their ride-on scrubber through doorways, hallways, and even elevators.
IDM’s ride-on floor scrubbers are also cordless and rechargeable, so users don’t have to waste time with tangled power cords that must be repeatedly plugged in and unplugged from job site to job site.
Enhanced Protocols Need Enhanced Technology
With healthcare facilities experiencing increased scrutiny from patients, visitors, and investors, it’s non-negotiable for hospitals to level up their cleaning routine.
Our team understands the unique needs of healthcare facilities. We offer a wide range of professional tile floor cleaning machines that can help hospital cleaning crews work more efficiently, effectively, and consistently when it’s time to clean tile floors.
Our line of floor scrubbers is designed to deliver a high-level clean on every type of floor surface – whether tile flooring surfaces or other hard flooring surfaces like LVT, concrete, VCT, and epoxy. The design of these machines makes the X-Scrub floor scrubbers highly versatile and user-friendly.
If you’re interested in adding a high-capacity floor scrubber to your hospital’s slate of cleaning equipment, reach out today to speak to a member of the IDM team. We would be happy to help you determine which tile floor cleaner machine is right for your space.