Kitchen Floor in Large Hospital Never Looked Cleaner

Hospital kitchens are busy every day of the year. Work starts early and ends late as employees prep and plate breakfast, lunch, and dinner for patients. The team also cooks meals and snacks for hungry staff and visitors looking for some food and a bit of respite.

Mike Quaintance, MS, RDN, LDN, understands the demanding pace of a hospital kitchen. As the TouchPoint Support Services Systems Director for a large hospital in the Chicago area, he oversees a kitchen staff that turns out over 1200 meals a day. “That’s for 600 customers in the cafeteria and over 600 meals for patients,” he explains.

The breakneck pace drives Quaintance to look for ways to improve processes and workflow wherever he can. This includes finding the best way to keep the kitchen’s 4,000-square-foot tile-and-grout floor clean and safe. His staff was sweeping and mopping the floor after each shift, but the results were not great. “It was frustrating,” he says. “The floors always looked dirty.”

After seeing a demo of the UniVac® by Kaivac, Quaintance decided to give the machine a try. He was so impressed with the results that he bought another UniVac one month later.

“Cleaning the floor with the UniVac is much faster and more convenient,” Quaintance reports. “There’s no sweeping, a lot less scrubbing, and no one has to change out dirty mop water or clean a mop bucket. Plus, the results are great! No more dirty shoe prints all over the place. The whole kitchen looks cleaner.”

Quaintance appreciates how nimble the UniVac is. Workers set the machine up at the beginning of a shift and tuck it under a counter until it’s needed. Because it runs on a battery there is never a power cord to accidentally trip over, making the UniVac a safer choice. “Plus, it’s simple to charge,” he says.

While Quaintance oversees a total of 105 workers, only seven Utility staff members regularly clean the floor. “Generally, it is our Utility workers who use the UniVac 90% of the time,” says Quaintance. “Cooks and food service workers use it once in a while if we have staffing issues.”

Despite this variability, the large pool of workers adapted to the new technology quickly, thanks to the easy-to-understand training videos. That means consistent, repeatable results, no matter who cleans the floor.

It also means happier, less frustrated employees who are less likely to turnover. Utility staff, who do the bulk of the floor cleaning, are notoriously hard to attract and retain, according to Quaintance. But he reports that, for the first time in a long time, the positions are fully staffed. He credits the UniVac for some of that achievement.

“Workers are glad to have the UniVac. It allows them to clean the floor quickly, leaving time to complete all their other tasks,” Quaintance says. “Everything gets done and the kitchen looks great.”