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AHS faces costly upgrades to linen facilities, after minister cancels privatization plan

Alberta Health Services’ plan to avoid multimillion-dollar upgrades to its laundry facilities by outsourcing the service to a private company were undone late last year by the NDP government, Postmedia has learned.

Documents obtained through an access to information request show AHS executives grew concerned in recent years about the decaying state of their linen and laundry sites around the province — facilities that supply clean bed sheets, gowns and surgical clothing at top sanitary standards.

Estimated costs to build sufficient new facilities have ranged from $54 million to $200 million, an expense the executives decided was prohibitive at a time when funding was needed for more direct clinical care areas, the documents show.

“AHS has reached a critical point where the only viable option for sustaining linen services that are core to patient care is to work with our existing linen contract provider and transition AHS facilities to them as effectively as possible,” says a briefing note from June last year.

That provider, K-Bro Linen Systems, has been used for years by AHS to provide medical linen in the Calgary and Edmonton regions, and the health authority planned to expand the contract to include the rest of the province. The executives noted other health regions, including some in Saskatchewan, B.C., Ontario and Quebec, had gone the outsourcing route.

But Health Minister Sarah Hoffman said she personally intervened late last year, telling AHS to look at other options since the strategy ran afoul of NDP policy to prevent further privatization of health services.

The plan would have led to the elimination of 130 to 140 full-time equivalent jobs at AHS.