Clorox is synonymous with disinfection and its healthcare products live up to the high standards that customers have come to expect when they see the company’s name.
The company was born just over a century ago. It provided products to businesses in the San Francisco Bay Area and from its humble beginnings grew to include many different products for various industries, including healthcare.
The Clorox Healthcare® Facility in Pleasanton, California
“The Clorox Company was originally founded in 1913 as The Electro-Alkaline Company,” explains Matt Laszlo, Vice President and General Manager, Clorox Professional Products Company. “The company produced liquid bleach at its first plant in Oakland, California, and sold it to industrial customers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, the company offers a diverse portfolio of products which includes products specially formulated for healthcare facilities.”
Clorox’s solid reputation in the retail market meant high expectations from customers when Clorox entered the healthcare sector and the company did not disappoint.
“When Clorox entered the healthcare market, we tried to raise the bar on how disinfectants should be thought about. We brought more focus to clinical data and to the science that helps healthcare providers reduce HAIs,” Laszlo says. “At Clorox we are always striving for better patient outcomes which aligns us well with the goals of healthcare facilities.”
Not only does Clorox strive for better patient outcomes, but it also looks to create solutions to help customers do their jobs more effectively and efficiently.
“While liquid bleach has been used in hospitals for decades to disinfect, we saw an opportunity to transform this product into a more effective, user-friendly form to offer customers a facility-wide disinfecting solution,” Laszlo explains. “We launched our Clorox Healthcare® Bleach Germicidal Wipes into the marketplace about eight years ago and saw a tremendous increase in our healthcare business. We invest significantly in research and development to deliver innovative disinfecting solutions specifically designed for healthcare facilities.”
Clorox doesn’t just sell products though. The company partners with its customers in their infection prevention journey.
Laszlo says, “Clorox Healthcare has a large team of account managers that are prepared to provide facility assessments to identify areas of concerns and recommendations for standardization and greater compliance. We offer in-service training and product education any time the customer requests it. It’s important that we work with our customers to help them achieve better outcomes in their facilities.
“In addition to in-service training, we also invest significantly in educational resources and tools,” he adds. “We create and sponsor webinars and whitepapers to provide education on emerging topics such as the importance of killing germs on soft surfaces. We also create infection prevention toolkits for C. difficile, norovirus and influenza as well as provide relevant pathogen education. Finally, we work with key opinion leaders to ensure that customers are getting the clinical data they need to make the right decisions for their facilities.”
After almost a decade serving the healthcare industry the company is looking forward to the future and continuing to support this very important sector that impacts lives on a daily basis.
“Surface disinfection is a core competency and has been for over 100 years. What excites us about the future is extending that clinical and technical expertise into other areas of infection control like skin antisepsis,” Laszlo says. “We truly feel that we have the technological capability to win in this space. We have best-in-class scientists that work tirelessly to develop solutions that will help our customers fight the spread of HAIs.”
The company is expanding both its disinfection and its skin antisepsis product portfolios. One new venture has been the introduction of disinfectants that can play a significant role in the operating room.
“We recently launched a new line of disinfectants that are hydrogen peroxide-based. Hydrogen peroxide has allowed us to deliver fast disinfecting kill times in a non-bleach form. We believe this product is a great solution for the operating room where fast turnover times in between surgeries are critical,” Laszlo says.
From left to right: Clorox Healthcare® Bleach Germicidal Cleaners and Wipes, Clorox Healthcare® Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaner Disinfectants, Clorox Healthcare Optimum-UV System, Aplicare® 4% CHG Skin Cleansing Kit, Aplicare® Skin Antisepsis Solutions.
In April, we will introduce the new Aplicare® 2-in-1 CHG Skin Cleansing Kit. The kit has a unique design that promotes compliance with AORN recommendations for 2 CHG cleanses prior to surgery,” he adds. “The kit removes barriers to patient compliance by giving patients everything they need in one convenient, easy-to-use package, including a bilingual, waterproof instruction card that can be taken into the shower for easy reference and access to instructional videos on Aplicare’s website. It’s a great example of where we’ve listened to issues of OR staff and developed a solution to address that need.
These new products are just the beginning.
“We have a strong focus on innovation and we have big plans to take surface disinfection and skin antisepsis to the next level over the next few years,” Laszlo says. “We will achieve this through our own technology development as well as partnerships and acquisitions with companies that align well with our strategies.”
An example of this partnership strategy is the recent venture between Clorox Healthcare and Ultraviolet Devices, Inc. (UVDI) to introduce the Clorox HealthcareTM Optimum-UVTM System. For the first time ever, the two companies will team up to combine the power of manual surface disinfection with advanced ultraviolet (UV) technology to deliver an even more comprehensive surface disinfection solution.
“This partnership signifies the importance of and the need for a bundling of environmental surface solutions, so hospitals can take a more comprehensive approach to reduce the threat of infections among patients, staff and visitors. With the Clorox Healthcare™ Optimum-UV™ System, there is now a solution that works hand-in-hand with routine manual cleaning and disinfecting procedures to reduce the threat of infection” Laszlo says.
Laszlo is quick to point out that the success of Clorox Healthcare is a direct result of its employees and their hard work.
“Clorox’s greatest asset is its people. Within Clorox Healthcare, many of the team-members have a personal mission to improve patient outcomes because their personal lives have been impacted by HAIs,” he explains. “This personal commitment results in creating leaders that can make an impact both at Clorox and in the healthcare community.”
The employees’ focus goes well with the Clorox Healthcare mission statement and together they provide a recipe that produces great results.
“The mission statement for our healthcare business is to ‘save lives by delivering comprehensive solutions that help eliminate healthcare-acquired infections.’ Everything we do has the patient and healthcare provider in mind and inspires us to deliver high-performing, effective solutions,” Laszlo says.
For more information about Clorox Healthcare, visit www.cloroxhealthcare.com.
