Hospital studies of reusable infection control textiles as isolation gowns: Lower annual hospital and national healthcare economic costs, but also better for the environment

Provide a broad geographic and hospital-size economic assessment of reusable isolation gowns compared directly with disposable isolation gowns in healthcare settings and identify factors for evidence-based sustainability decision-making for hospitals and manufacturing firms. The approach uses multi-hospital data on the costs of reusables and disposables, including detailed reusable laundry costs (2021) collected from 137 hospitals, covering laundry, replacements, and transport. A comparison of reusable and disposable isolation gowns is important for the economic perspectives of healthcare organization sustainability decision-making (nurses, personnel, and stakeholders). The study used actual laundry expenditures from 134 widely distributed hospitals in competitive markets across the Eastern U.S. and Canada, along with a field assessment of the number of use cycles. The 2021 annual costs for disposable isolation gowns were also estimated. For U.S. hospital systems (6129 hospitals), selecting reusable isolation gowns yields annual savings of about $740 million, which would cover the average hospital stay of cost of about 270,000 patients per year or about 5400 patients per State in our country simply by choosing reusable gowns over disposables to prevent infections Reusable isolation gowns would account for about 10% of these savings. When comparing annual disposable and reusable costs, disposables were 200% more expensive. The economic advantages of reusable isolation gowns build on earlier environmental improvements and now provide evidence-based data for decision-makers, nurses, hospital stakeholders, healthcare organizations, and service providers of these products. Past research indicates major benefits across eight environmental metrics and shows that the long-term risk of healthcare-associated infections from reusables over 50 years remains negligible.