Central Linen Services provides laundry and linen distribution services for the Royal Bournemouth Hospital as well as a number of other sites in South West Hampshire and East Dorset. Linen supply managers needed a way to forecast demand in order to plan work-flows and guarantee availability of the many different items handled. They also needed to keep track of linens used at each site and department so accurate internal recharges could be made.

Traditionally items had been manually counted but this was increasingly found to be unhygienic, slow and inefficient. The solution to the problem came in the form of a Clematis Stock Control system supplied by Green Valet. This records linens used by location, user, date and time. It provides full reports and analyses including cost per ward and department.

Information is recorded by means of a number of keyboards which are attached to linen distribution trolleys or located in each linen room. Data is entered by nursing or linen room staff as linens are ‘consumed’. Wards have their own unique PIN number to ensure accuracy and all issuing data is stored and later downloaded onto the main linen department computer network.

The entire operation is automated and removes the need for pen and paper records, transferring data into spreadsheets and generating reports. Information from many sites is consolidated into a single report which gives a total overview of use. Data is forwarded electronically to the accounts department to raise internal recharges.

A further benefit of the Clematis is that it provides accurate demand forecasts. These have enabled Central Linen Services to increase its efficiency by planning staff hours and laundry work-flows more accurately. It also means they can pinpoint areas which are making excessive or under use of specific items compared to benchmarks.

Clematis Stock Control is now in use on over 100 sites in the NHS for laundry and linen supply, domestic services cleaning management and catering management. If you would like to speak to us about how Clematis can benefit your operations, call us now on 01920 463 098.