Healthcare is largely built on a hierarchy of visibility. Physicians command the room, nurses are recognized for their proximity to care, and clinicians carry the weight of clinical authority. But according to Darryl Radford, a 30-year veteran of the healthcare environmental services industry and founder of Elite EVS Healthcare Operations Consultants, LLC, a firm that offers executive coaching and leadership development for senior healthcare administrators, there is an entire infrastructure working beneath that hierarchy, one that makes everything above it possible.
"There is absolutely no place in the entire hospital that can operate without a good environmental services team," Radford says. The data reinforces that assertion. Every year, approximately 136 million hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) occur globally, while on any given day, about 1 in 31 hospital patients has at least one hospital-acquired infection.
