What Does it Mean To Be Medical Grade?
Spring of 2020 began with a lot of unknowns throughout the world. After the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, many people turned to the CDC for answers and cleaning professionals for immediate, tactical responses. The portion of cleaning companies that were able to maintain their cleaning workforce became crucial frontline workers that were suddenly launched into battling the spreading virus as best as they knew how.
But how many of these companies were maintaining the proper training, chemical handling, and high-touch-point targeting that was truly necessary for efficient disinfection?
We ask because we want to bring awareness to the critical difference between everyday cleaning and certified, medical-grade disinfection that halts the spread of infection.
At Bee Line Support, we have been mastering our cleaning and disinfection methods since our founding. We have also made sure to hire personnel with the certifications and education necessary to train our entire frontline on proper infection prevention. Our onsite safety manager holds his Certificate of Mastery in Infection Prevention (CMIP) which is utilized constantly to build out every aspect of our training, auditing, and purchasing protocol. He also holds Certification Training for Surgical Cleaning Technicians so he can train and certify other members of our management team to ensure they’re equipped with the knowledge and training abilities needed to keep our 500+ workforce educated and effective at every type of site. With these certifications and training regimens, we have built out the infrastructure to train all of our frontline employees to make sure each of our facilities is left spotless and free of any harmful pathogens.
What is a Certificate of Mastery in Infection Prevention?
Years and years before COVID-19 existed, Infection Prevention was top of mind for the Bee Line team. We knew our team needed to be trained on the correct ways to eliminate pathogens in facilities. To do this, in 2017, our Safety and Compliance Manager, Tom Klimaszewski, completed a rigorous program to receive his Certificate of Mastery in Infection Prevention (CMIP) through the Association for the Health Care Environment (AHE).
This 34-hour intensive program consisted of online modules, a weekend of in-person training, along a capstone project to receive the final certification. By the end of the program, each student would have the information needed to meet the Centers for Medicare (CMS) requirements to properly clean and care for a clinical environment.
The CMIP course made sure to cover the most important topics of infection prevention, such as:
- Introduction to Microbiology
- Introduction to Epidemiology
- Infection Prevention During Construction Projects
- Infection Prevention and Preparedness for Biological Events
Many healthcare providers take this course to help provide cleaning and education within the healthcare field, but barely any janitorial services companies invest in such extensive certification. Not only does this certificate help us to confidently protect our clients and stand out against our competitors, but it was the biggest differentiator between our success and response times as COVID first hit compared to others.
Every frontline worker within the Bee Line team is required to complete multiple modules, courses, and training on Infection Prevention techniques. Throughout COVID, we ramped up this education and sent daily updates to our staff about how to properly clean and disinfect for the best results. Our leadership has worked hard to take all of the knowledge and best practices gleaned from this certification to share the most current and approved advice with our medical cleaning company, while always staying up-to-date through our many healthcare certification partners, experts, and health organizations.
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