Some of the unsung heroes of Medical Center Hospital are the housekeeping crew, part of Environmental Services.
The department works 24/7, 365, has very little turnover and has a limited time to do their work. Director of Environmental Services Joe Montes said they run three shifts a day with the bulk of the work during the second shift.
When Montes arrived about 11 years ago, they had 58 employees and now they have 96 full-time employees and the department is considered essential, along with physicians and nursing staff.
“We definitely have grown substantially,” Montes said.
They clean the hospital, operating rooms and clinics.
There are three shifts per day and staffing levels have grown substantially. The first shift includes more customer service/patient facing housekeepers; the second shift are the “work horses”; and the graveyard shift.
Montes said the first shift is from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.; second shift runs 3 p.m. to midnight; third shift 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m.
“Our first shift is very much geared toward patient care, unit cares. That’s a lot of our housekeepers that are very much customer service based. Then also they’re cleaning rooms with the patients inside the rooms. We definitely can’t do as much cleaning in the room with the patient in there as for example if the patient leaves then they’ll say it’s a discharge room,” Montes said.
“We usually clean anywhere from 75 to 120 checkout rooms in a 24-hour period,” Montes added.
Each housekeeper cleans eight to 12 rooms. They have regular patient cleans and isolation room cleans for patients who have C. diff and MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), which causes staph infections.
They have to use different chemicals, they take a little longer to clean and they also have to throw out all the paper products whether they were used or not as germs can adhere to the paper. Then they would have to restock.
Housekeeping also cleans the operating rooms and bathrooms.
Despite the time limitations, they need to clean the rooms properly, including changing the sheets and disinfecting. But they also need to clean it in the allotted time as you might have people in the emergency room that have been waiting for a patient room for hours, for example.
For a regular room clean, it’s about 35 minutes. They have terminal cleans for operating rooms and cleans at the end of the day. They use chemicals as well as UV disinfection in the ORs.
On average operating rooms take about 65 minutes to clean and the housekeepers wear Tyvek suits.
The chemicals used didn’t change and Montes said they also killed COVID-19.
Management and OR management check every day to make sure they are up to standard and if they’re not, it’s corrected.
They also have a floor crew that works on a nightly basis, cleaning, sanitizing and shining floors for all 978,000 square feet of them. That includes the hospital and the clinics.
The hospital is the staging area for the Environmental Service staff, but they also have people that handle the urgent care clinics, so not everyone has to report to the hospital on a daily basis.
“We do have a great management team, and then also we have a supervisor that goes out to all of our clinics every day, checks on our staff, makes sure that everyone’s doing well, make sure that everyone’s safe,” Montes said.
They typically send the trusted, experienced housekeepers to the outlying clinics.
Turnover is only 13 percent in Environmental Services compared to the 35 percent national average. They have very good employee engagement in the department, structured management and very good employee morale.
“I believe we’re one of the highest departments with the biggest number. … We’re at a 96 percent employee engagement in a department with almost 100 employees … We’re one of the most employee friendly departments in the hospital,” Montes said.
Director of Public Relations Trevor Tankersley said they put out surveys to rate other departments and interactions with them and that’s almost 100 percent.
“People are very honest, too,” Tankersley said. “… They are very well though of.”
Other hospitals reach out to him about how they keep people when those other facilities are in Houston or Dallas.
“… It’s putting our employees up there with our patients and making sure that our employees are taken care of; making sure that they have what they need to complete their job; making sure that they have their time that they need to rest; (and) the time with their families. That’s big right now. We’re focusing on that,” Montes said.
They tailor employee hours to go with their schedules at home and they also hire a lot of people by word of mouth.
“Our benefit is because even though we work a lot, we’re a 24 hour department; we’re 365 That’s something that we can use to our advantage, even though it’s a lot of work for us. So I have three kids and also I take care of my mom at night. Well, that’s great. Can you work with graveyard shift?”
The graveyard shift is 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m.
The hospital Chief Operating Officer, Matt Collins, was a floor tech about 10 years ago, cleaning, sanitizing and buffing floors on the third shift, Montes said.
“He always offers his services. He’s always like, hey, listen, if you’re going to need help you like me call me; I’m going to come jump in,” Montes said.
He added that the employees help with the hiring process a lot and they don’t even realize it.
“That’s our biggest asset to hiring is actually employee referrals; family members; ex-coworkers; friends; neighbors. That’s where we get the majority of our employees,” Montes said.
He tells people when they have time off to take it and spend time with their families.
“If you don’t need to work overtime, that’s fine. Don’t sign up for it. I’m not telling you you have to. You need to rest,” Montes said.
They have two cleaning disinfection technologies that they use.
“One of them is our UV light. We’ve actually had that technology since about 2013. When a new generation comes out of course we have to buy into the system. We want to be up there with a state-of-the art equipment, especially for disinfection. It’s something that no one thinks about; no one talks about but everyone wants to have. We do have our UV light systems. Those primarily go in our patient rooms and also in our ORs (operating rooms) and also in our isolation rooms. So COVID, C. diff, MRSA, when that patient leaves (it) gets cleaned (and) disinfected by our employees and then also we go in with our technology. We go in with our UV light. And then also, we also have a new tool in our arsenal that came out around the COVID time. It’s actually called electrostatic disinfection. It’s what kind of is generally referred to as misters or foggers. Very tiny little particles; almost looks like smoke. But it’s actually little droplets that basically flood the room with disinfectant,” Montes said.
The one MCH uses is medical grade.
“Each one of those little droplets has an electrostatic charge to it. So from where Trevor is standing, if we were going to treat this room, he would treat it from where he’s standing. It’s so cool the way it works. He would basically flood this room with this smoke, and then this smoke, each little particle is electrically charged, it will adhere to the surface evenly. And then even where you can’t see underneath the desk, on the side of the desk, because it’s electrostatically charged so then those little droplets they won’t gather on top of each other, they’ll go hand in hand with each other evenly all around the room,” Montes said.
He added that it’s super cool and they use it every day.
Tankersley said you might expect it more at a high-tech company, but it’s here in Odessa.
“The general public knows it as misters. I know it as medical grade electrostatic disinfection because that’s exactly what it is. I love that stuff,” Montes said.
He added that they use it every day in Odessa and you might expect it more at a high-tech company.
