Ruikang Renhu Health: Five "Strengthening" Measures to Control Costs + 6S Standard Production Practice Integration

Company Overview

Renhusheng Medical Technology Co., Ltd. was established in May 2015, with a registered capital of 70 million yuan and a building area of more than 10,000 square meters. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ruikang Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. (stock code: 002589).

The company has set up a washing and disinfection center and a disinfection supply center, and strictly follows the newly issued "Basic Standards for Medical Disinfection Supply Centers (Trial)" (Guo Wei Yi Fa [2018] No. 11) by the National Health Commission, "Technical Specifications for Hospital Medical Textile Washing and Disinfection" (WS/T 508-2016), "Hospital Disinfection Supply Center Part 1: Management Specifications" (WS 310.1-2016), "Hospital Disinfection Supply Center Part 2: Cleaning, Disinfection and Sterilization Technical Operation Specifications" (WS 310.2-2016), "Hospital Disinfection Supply Center Part 3: Cleaning, Disinfection and Sterilization Effect Monitoring Standards" (WS 310.3-2016), and other requirements. It is responsible for providing customers with integrated professional services including washing and leasing of medical textiles, centralized disinfection of mattresses, cleaning, disinfection, sterilization, and leasing of medical soft and hard instruments.

Strength Competitiveness with Advanced Equipment

Configuration and Standardized Processes as the Foundation

Adhering to the company philosophy of "Quality First, Customer First, Service First," Renhusheng closely focuses on the needs of client hospitals, equips imported high-end equipment, optimizes processes, and standardizes management.

The company's washing service center adopts a clean and dirty isolation design, with an investment of more than 200 million yuan. It has introduced a full set of German Kannegiesser washing equipment, sorting platforms and sling conveyor systems, industrial continuous washing machines, high-speed extractors, isolated washer-extractors, transfer machines, gas-fired through-type dryers, steam compact dryers, high-efficiency ironing machines with automatic folding functions, gas-fired automatic drying cages, uniform folding robots, and bedding disinfection machines, achieving automated transmission, washing, dehydration, drying, ironing, and folding of medical textiles, with semi-automation throughout the process. It is also equipped with professional logistics vehicles and a sewage treatment workshop, with treated water meeting national discharge standards. According to design standards, it can meet the washing service requirements for medical textiles of 50,000 hospital beds.

From the process perspective, in all links of hospital dirty textile collection, transportation, sorting, transmission, washing, disinfection, dehydration, drying, ironing, folding, packaging, and distribution in the washing and disinfection service, nearly one hundred rules, job operation specifications, and emergency plans have been established and improved; in response to uneven professional levels of employees, training plans have been formulated to provide comprehensive training for management personnel, newly recruited employees, and on-the-job staff; reasonable staffing and post assignments are implemented, with responsibilities and remuneration based on posts, and clear rewards and punishments; strict 6S requirements are followed for on-site management, achieving orderly placement and cleanliness. Renhusheng Medical Technology Co., Ltd. has become the first washing factory in Shandong Province to pass European professional certification, becoming a world-class well-known brand with great influence, wide coverage, and high integrity in the province.

Five "Strengthenings" to Control Costs

+6S Standard Production

Building Core Competitiveness

Today's market competition is a competition of strength, product and service quality, and cost. It can be said that cost determines a company's competitiveness. In the fierce competition of hospital textile washing and disinfection market, Renhusheng, based on its own reality, strengthens cost control, process reengineering, post setting, equipment advantages, and service quality, striving to improve the company's equipment operation and enterprise management level, forming the company's core competitiveness. The number of client hospitals, business volume, company reputation, and influence have steadily increased year by year.

Renhusheng takes 6S production standardization as the criterion and adopts a series of strong measures to improve management processes and cost control.

Effective Cost Control

1. Fully mobilize the enthusiasm of enterprise management and frontline employees, implement the principle of combining responsibility, authority, and benefits, and establish an atmosphere and mechanism of "everyone saves, everyone contributes."

2. Optimize work processes, rebuild the organizational structure with fixed posts and staffing according to the characteristics and operating requirements of imported washing equipment, strictly manage all work area locations according to 6S on-site requirements, streamline redundancies, clarify employee responsibilities, and encourage enthusiastic work.

3. Carry out medical textile and soft instrument leasing services, and install electronic chips on leased medical textiles and soft instruments. Using RFID equipment, the collection process requires no manual sorting, and the special machine does not need to open packages to count quantities before washing. This meets infection control requirements, ensures quantity accuracy, and saves labor costs.

4. Control procurement costs by using scientific decision-making and analysis methods to reasonably determine economic order quantities or batch sizes for various raw materials, auxiliaries, office supplies, and consumables, select suppliers through bidding or competitive negotiation, and decide procurement timing.

5. According to client hospitals' requirements for medical textile washing and disinfection delivery times, optimize reasonably, concentrate operation times, reduce the use of water, electricity, and natural gas, and also lower labor and logistics costs.

Excellent Quality Management

To improve the quality of medical textile washing and disinfection, prevent contamination, cross-infection, and accidents related to employee personal protection, Renhusheng remains vigilant and well-prepared.

1. Through learning, training, and establishing rules and regulations, strive to improve the awareness level of all management personnel and frontline employees. Infection control relates to product quality, patient health, company reputation, and enterprise survival.

2. Strictly implement the "Technical Specifications for Hospital Medical Textile Washing and Disinfection" (WS/T 508-2016) and other national laws and regulations, and formulate relevant rules and regulations based on the company's actual situation, creating an atmosphere where everyone respects and abides by laws, regulations, and rules.

3. Take effective preventive measures, such as reasonable layout of washing and disinfection workshops, clear zoning of two areas and three channels, clear signage, separation of clean and dirty flows, no cross-contamination, and no backflow.

4. After sorting dirty textiles, carry out classified washing and disinfection, especially for surgical gowns and surgical dressings, infant textiles are washed and disinfected by special machines, and infectious textiles are washed and disinfected in dedicated areas by special machines.

5. Special vehicles and containers are specifically allocated for transporting soiled and clean fabrics, transported in a closed manner, and each is used once, cleaned once, and disinfected at high temperature.

6. Establish a product information traceability system that meets service quality requirements, with system data security management policies and emergency measures, using information systems to control the quality of cleaning, disinfection, sterilization, and supply, and to achieve quality traceability.

Rational understanding of integrated cleaning and disinfection,

Ensure the company, as a professional institution,

provides professional services

During the interview, General Manager Liu of Renhusheng elaborated in detail on the company's understanding of integrated cleaning and disinfection, the achievements already made, and the focus areas for future development.

They believe: integrated cleaning and disinfection includes two aspects. First, it refers to the integration of surgical instrument cleaning and disinfection. For a long time, operating room items have been traditionally cleaned and packed by operating room nurses before being sent to the sterilization supply room for sterilization. Now, the process has changed to pre-treatment in the operating room, then counting and handing over to dedicated instrument personnel at the hospital or third-party sterilization supply center, followed by cleaning and packing sterilization by fully automatic washers for professional handling. This not only reduces the workload of operating room nurses but also ensures the quality of instrument cleaning and sterilization, effectively controlling hospital infections.

Second, it is the integration and unification of medical fabric washing and diagnostic instrument disinfection supply. The main features of the integrated development of medical fabric and diagnostic instrument cleaning and disinfection are reflected in the integration of outsourced services, the integration of disinfection and sterile item supply, and the integration of quality control.

With the improvement of social medical service quality and hospital infection control standards, disinfection supply management is becoming more professional, more centralized in scale, more information-based in quality traceability management, and more refined in service. Within a certain regional scope, based on the volume of services, scientifically and reasonably establishing a disinfection supply center that can provide professional, standardized, efficient, fast, and accurate services is an important measure to control hospital infections. This not only allows effective utilization of disinfection supply equipment and human resources but also makes disinfection supply work more standardized, procedural, and standardized. It helps hospitals free up existing space and human resources, reduce resource waste, save hospital costs, reduce audit pressure, and focus on improving their core business levels. This is both the development direction advocated by national policies and reflects the principle of letting professional institutions and professionals do professional work.

Renhusheng Medical Technology Co., Ltd. has developed through unity, effort, and active progress. In 2015, it was elected Vice President of the Shandong Laundry Industry Association; in 2016, it was awarded the title of "Shandong Laundry Industry Standard Drafting Unit" and successfully passed the continuous neutral supervision and audit of the German Hohenstein Institute, obtaining the German Professional Textile Service Certification Association's (RAL-GZ 992/2) medical textile care quality certification and was awarded the RAL hygiene certificate; in 2019, it passed ISO9001 and ISO13485 quality system certifications.