Healthcare Linen Supplier for Hospitals and Care Homes

What do healthcare buyers specify that hotel buyers do not?

Four things, and all four change the figures on the order rather than the way we weave the cloth. A ward sheet and a guest room sheet can come off the same loom and still be two different lines.

The first is colour. If your sites code linen by department, give us a Pantone reference per line rather than a colour name. A ward, a theatre store and a day unit can then each hold a shade that staff and the laundry sort at a glance. The cost is stock depth: every shade is a separate pool that cannot cover a bed anywhere else.

The second is the laundry round. Tell us how often the linen goes back through the wash on your sites, how it is dried and finished, and whether the work is done on site or by a contract laundry. You then set the blend against that. A larger polyester share holds shape and dries faster. Cotton sits softer and takes up more moisture. The polycotton blends sit between them.

The third is the bed itself. A profiling frame changes shape as it is adjusted. So we quote a fitted sheet for one from the depth you measure on the mattress, as it sits on the frame, with any protector already fitted. Send the length, the width and the depth together, and send them separately for each make of bed on site.

The fourth is paperwork. Tell us the standard or test report your market needs, and we arrange it with your order. Name it while we are quoting the lines, not after the cloth is woven, so goods and documents are prepared side by side.

Which lines are quoted from this page?

The woven ones. We weave the cloth, cut it to the measurements on your line and hem it. So bed sheets, draw sheets and pillowcases go straight onto a specification and come back priced.

Garments are a separate question. Patient gowns, surgical gowns, nurse uniforms, scrubs and lab coats are made up pieces, and this page does not quote them. Put the requirement to us in writing first, with the sizes and the quantity. We will then tell you plainly which part of it we can price.

We would rather say that here than let you build a tender around it. If you need linen and garments together, flag both at the enquiry, so one reply covers the whole list.

Who orders healthcare linen in bulk?

Five kinds of buyer. The quantity on each order follows the beds in use and the laundry round behind them, not a catalogue.

• Hospitals and acute trusts, ordering against the ward bed list and the departments that code their linen separately.
• Care homes and nursing home groups, fitting out resident rooms where the linen should feel domestic rather than clinical.
• Clinics, day units and treatment rooms, usually taking shorter lines in a shade of their own.
• Healthcare laundries, holding a pool deep enough to keep every site they serve running while stock is away being washed.
• Medical distributors and dealers, buying to a written specification and selling on under a label of their own.