A simple way to measure whether your laundry provider is helping your facility or quietly slowing it down.

Healthcare linen is supposed to be invisible. When it’s working, nobody talks about it. When it’s not, everyone feels it—nursing, EVS, central supply, and administration. The Friction Test is one question: How much time does our team spend managing linen today?

If the honest answer includes constant follow-ups, recurring shortages, unclear ownership, or “we’ve just learned to live with it,” that’s friction, and friction is expensive.

Research backs up what every healthcare leader already knows: time lost to “workarounds” is real, common, and contagious across a unit. Studies of hospital workflow describe frequent time-wasting activities and operational barriers that pull staff away from patient care.

Emily Hauber, CITY’s Director of Communications, sums up the difference in one line: every provider will miss something eventually, the separation is how fast it gets fixed and how it's proactively resolved in the future.

“We always say that we are in the laundry business, so our customers don’t have to be,” Emily said. “Being complacent with a laundry service that doesn’t fulfill its end of the deal isn’t a program worth being in. At CITY, this is the goal, and it has never changed.”

Friction isn’t always dramatic. It’s the steady drip of avoidable effort:

• Nurses hunting for basics (bath blankets, towels, gowns)

• EVS is improvising because healthcare laundry carts aren’t built consistently

• “Who owns this?” when shortages happen

• Multiple calls/emails to get a simple correction

• Chronic issues that never fully close—only pause

“Another way to look at this, laundry problems eventually become people problems,” Emily said.

Run the Friction Test (5-minute version)

Ask these three internal questions:

1. How often do we chase linen issues each week?

2. When something goes wrong, do we know exactly who fixes it—and by when?

3. Do problems stay solved, or do they return in a different form?

If those answers feel fuzzy, your facility is spending hidden labor to keep laundry and linen service afloat.

The Friction Scorecard (use this to diagnose the root cause)

Give each category a score from 0–3:

0 = rarely an issue | 1 = occasional | 2 = frequent | 3 = constant

1) Shortages and par-level instability

• Are you routinely “making do” until the next delivery?

• Are pars reviewed when census/services change?

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2) Cart accuracy and consistency

• Do departments receive the right mix consistently?

• Do mis-picks become a normal expectation?

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3) Communication effort

• Does your team spend time tracking down answers?

• Do you have a named escalation path?

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4) Speed of correction

• When there’s a miss, does it get corrected same-day/next-day?

• Or does it linger until someone gives up?

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5) Repeat failures

• Does the provider perform corrective action—or just apologize?

A higher score doesn’t mean your people are failing. It means your system is forcing workarounds.

What a true partner does to remove friction

CITY President Colin Wetlaufer describes why systems matter: a quality management approach creates a “formal process for when things go right and when things go wrong”, improving internal accountability so responsiveness is real, not just promised.

• Visible corrective action (so the same issue doesn’t keep reappearing)

• Proactive par conversations when facility needs change

• Consistent standards that don’t drift after onboarding

How CITY Healthcare (a division of CITY Laundering Co), the focus is simple: make linen boring againfor our clients with predictable deliveries, clear communication, and fast recovery when something breaks.

We focus on reducing friction by:

• Building service around repeatable standards and accountability

• Closing the loop with real corrective action, not just quick fixes

• Keeping communication human and direct, so your team isn’t stuck in a ticket loop

• Staying disciplined on consistency, because consistency is what protects your workflows