Healthcare Administrators, Facility Managers Carpet Cleaning Facts

A Carpet Prescription That Benefits Your Patients and Your Facility

The Facts about Carpet Cleaning and Maintenance for Healthcare Administrators and Facility Managers

This is the 12th in a series of 18 articles designed to share some of the Carpet and Rug Institute’s (CRI) best online assets – a collection of downloadable fact sheets.

Developed as easy-to-use, one-page position statements, the CRI Fact Sheets cover four main carpet-related topic areas: Indoor Air Quality, Asthma and Allergy, Cleaning Products, and Environmental Sustainability.

Each of these topics is addressed from the perspective of various market segments: carpet dealers and consumers; architects, designers and builders; school administrators and facility managers, and healthcare administrators and facility managers. There are also separate fact sheets explaining CRI’s Green Label Plus Indoor Air Quality and Seal of Approval carpet cleaning standards – 18 fact sheets in all.

The fact sheet on cleaning products for healthcare administrators and facility managers begins,

"In healthcare settings, you need to keep your focus on patients and your eye on the budget. Carpet is not only affordable to install, but properly cleaned and maintained, it also delivers savings years into the future. Better yet, it enhances the overall safety of your healthcare environment." It continues:

What You Should Know About Carpet Cleaning Facts for Healthcare Administrators and Facility Managers:

• Carpet is cost effective. In fact, it can be 65 percent less expensive to maintain than hard surface flooring. While buying and installing hard surface flooring appears less expensive than carpet in the short run, the true cost of labor, supplies, and equipment over an average 22-year lifespan makes carpet a more cost-effective choice.

• Hard surface floors require 2 1/2 times more cleaning than carpet annually, increasing maintenance time and impacting limited human resources. Hard surface cleaning supplies are also nearly seven times more expensive than carpet cleaning supplies.

• To preserve the life of your carpet, clean it with supplies that have the CRI Seal of Approval. CRI created the Seal of Approval program to help customers identify carpet cleaning products that clean effectively without harming the carpet. For a list of these products, click on Seal of Approval at carpet-rug.org.

• The CRI Seal of Approval is especially important because independent testing shows that many cleaning detergents and spot removers clean no better than water. Worse, they can leave a sticky residue that attracts soil at a faster rate. There are also big differences in the soil removal capability among vacuums and extractors.

• Vacuuming is the single most effective means of keeping carpet clean; 90 to 95% of all dry soil by weight can be removed from carpet by following a routine schedule. Choose vacuums that bear the CRI Seal of Approval for assurance of effective soil removal and good air quality.

• Carpet also offers health benefits, helping to cushion the impact of falls and lessen the chance of injury. A study of 225 hospital slip and fall incidents with older patients found that 17% sustained injury when  falling on carpet, compared to 50% when falling on hard surfaces.

CRI wants to be known not just as the science-based source of information about carpet, but as the first stop for any and all questions about this useful floor covering.

Click on this link for the complete list of Carpet and Rug Institute (CRI) Downloadable Fact Sheets.

Next – The facts about cleaning products for carpet sustainability for carpet dealers and consumers.

~Bethany