Healthcare Design - June 2015 - 45

- Sponsored Content -

Coated Fabric Upholstery
Materials for Healthcare Settings:
Selection & Disinfection
The new landscape of hospital reporting and transparency makes
choosing the right healthcare upholstery even more important.
This white paper presents interior designers with the viewpoints
of healthcare providers working to reduce HAIs in healthcare settings
while keeping patients' needs for comfort and pleasing aesthetics front
and center. It explores the criteria for selecting upholstery that resists
the harsh disinfectants used by frontline healthcare workers.

Upholstery manufacturers and associations
are continuously examining how a healthcare
upholstery material's resistance to disinfectants
can be measured and improved.
The seemingly conflicting goals of choosing healthcare upholstery that
is pleasing and comfortable while at the same time durable and tough
enough to withstand disinfection have created a design challenge.

Disinfection in the Healthcare Setting
Pathogens in healthcare environments are a potential cause of infectious
disease. They are passed by person-to-person contact, but also
by contact with the surfaces that we touch.
Healthcare guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
classify healthcare surfaces by their risk level: Critical; Semi-critical; and
Non-critical.
The CDC prescribes different methods of disinfection for each level.
For non-critical surfaces, such as furniture and equipment, low-level
disinfection is achieved by following the guidelines published by the
CDC using a range of disinfectants that have been registered with the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In a patient's room, for example, non-critical surfaces include walls,
floors, light switches, faucets, toilets, bed rails, furniture, and more.
In other healthcare areas, these surfaces can include gurneys, procedure
chairs, waiting area furniture, and nurses' stations. All of these surfaces,

independent of the materials from which they are made, are cleaned and
disinfected on a routine schedule, sometimes under conditions that are
less than ideal.
This white paper focuses on upholstery materials used in environments
that require more frequent cleaning and disinfection.

Whiteboarding the Preferred Healthcare
Upholstery Material
Working with C.F. Stinson, OMNOVA Solutions has identified what it
believes to be preferred characteristics for the selection of healthcare
upholstery materials to perform well in this challenging environment,
including:
 Impermeable

 Minimal or no texture

 Durable

 Color range

 Soft to the touch

 Cleanable

In addition to preferred physical characteristics, there are important
compositional properties for healthcare upholstery materials:
 Sustainable
 Resistance to microbial growth
 Resistance to damage from disinfectants.
Good healthcare upholstery material choices improve healthcare's bottom line.
Healthcare environments pose many unique design challenges,
especially when it comes to surface materials and their disinfection
and cleaning. By selecting an upholstery material that is compatible
with CDC guidelines for disinfection, and resistant to widely used
EPA-registered disinfectants, gains can be made in creating a healthy
and healing environment for patients and providers.
Excerpted from "Coated Fabric Upholstery Materials for Healthcare
Settings: Selection & Disinfection," provided by Omnova Solutions,
Clorox Healthcare®, and C.F. Stinson.

To learn more download the complete free white paper here:
www.healthcaredesignmagazine.com/upholstery-material
http://www.healthcaredesignmagazine.com/upholstery-material
Healthcare Design - June 2015

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