Safer scrubs in the hospital
Sanford-based company tries to prevent spread of infections.
Several years ago, during a Thanksgiving holiday, Jeff Feuer met up with a childhood friend who had become an executive at a large teaching hospital in New York. Feuer himself had built a career in the medical device industry.
“He said, ‘Your reps are contaminating our operating rooms,’ Feuer recalled. ‘You see them in their scrubs at the airports, coffee shops, gas stations. They are getting a set of scrubs from the hospital and they were wearing them directly into the OR from their home.’’’
Feuer wanted to fix the problem, so he and another colleague eventually decided to leave their high-paying jobs and launch RepScrubs in 2015.
The Sanford-based company places vending systems in hospitals that sign up with the program. The hospitals require every sales representative who has to enter an operating room or lab to buy and wear disposable scrubs from the vending machines, which are called ScrubPort.
Every package has a scrub, a red bouffant and shoe covers. The reps get printed security badges that identify them by name, company and the hospital the scrubs were purchased from. The badges turn red eight hours after being printed, showing that the scrubs are invalid for future use. Each packet is about $7.95.
Hospital executives around the nation are in a constant battle with bugs that cause infections in their facilities. Their goal is to decrease the rate of infections, which is not an easy task.
Researchers are still trying to understand how to prevent infections, considering the complex interaction between patients, health-care professionals and the environment. One element in the equation is clothing. Studies have shown that scrubs and clothing worn by healthcare providers are often contaminated with germs like MRSA and may serve as a source of transmission to patients or recontamination of the hospital, according to a 2017 study in the journal Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.
Professional societies, including the American College of Surgeons, recommend clean attire for the operating room and advise against wearing the scrubs outside of the operating room and the hospital.
There’s no evidence that sales reps’ scrubs specifically is associated with an increased risk of infections in the operating rooms. However, what sets sales reps apart is that they’re not hospital employees. Most hospitals have policies around clean attires, but they can’t enforce it on third-party vendors.
More than 120 hospitals nationwide have signed up with RepScrubs, including HCA East Florida, Broward Health, the University of Miami Hospital and Memorial Healthcare System, according to RepScrubs website. No hospital in Central Florida has signed on so far.
Memorial Healthcare decided to install ScrubPorts in its hospitals for infection control, security and cost savings, said Judy Frum, chief operation officer for Memorial Regional Hospital, in Hollywood, Fla., which is part of Memorial Healthcare System.
“We’ve been associated with the company for a little over three years,” Frum said. “Everything’s working well.”
RepScrubs vending machines