Spire Bushey Hospital- Case Study

Winner of the Queen's Award for Enterprise 2022, Sychem are specialists in Disinfection, Sterilisation and Decontamination. Offering an extensive portfolio of decontamination equipment, infection control consumables, a range of chemicals and equipment servicing options, Sychem are a leading provider to a variety of industries.

Within our vast portfolio of decontamination equipment is a selection of autoclaves, washers, low temperature sterilisers, ultrasonic washer disinfectors and more!

Steelco and Sychem

All of our decontamination equipment is manufactured by our partner Steelco. The Italian manufacturing giant has worked in partnership with Sychem since 2008 to offer a diverse range of equipment, tailored to suit the needs of any facility.

Sychem is Steelco's number one supplier to Private Healthcare settings in the UK, and there are hundreds of facilities that are delighted by Sychem's installation, equipment and servicing processes.

Another satisfied customer

In 2018, Sychem undertook a Project at Spire Bushey Hospital to equip a brand new SSD department that was being built on the side of the building.

To ensure that the new department ran as smoothly as possible, Sychem installed three VS8 603-litre single door medical autoclaves, working with three-tier carriages to give them a DIN capacity of 12 DIN baskets per load. In addition, we also stored three DS 1000 washer disinfectors, that are used with five-level loading racks, to give them 15 DIN capacity per cycle.

These machines run at a time of around 32 to 48 minutes. Sychem also installed two pass-through hatches, to enable products to be passed back from the dirty side to the clean side of the operation.

Sarah Baptiste, the SSD Manager at Spire Bushey, said, "when we were working out of the old SSD upstairs, we had a Sychem washer and another washer, that was broken.

Your washer being so good made us say we want one of those downstairs, in the new SSD!".

Sarah has been working at Spire Bushey for over 23 years, following in her mother's footsteps, who had previously worked at the hospital. Despite initially only coming to work at the Hospital for three months, Sarah was offered the role of Manager within her first year of employment- and has been there ever since.

Out with the old and in with the new!

After the machines were installed, we checked in with Sarah to see how she got on with them! She said, "They're really great. To be honest, because we have the three levels on the loading tray, even if we are down an autoclave or a washer, we can always work around it.

They are so quick too! Our old autoclaves would take around an hour and 10 minutes, so these working so much quicker means there is never a shortage on surgery- never any issues."

We asked Sarah whether there was much of a difference between the newer Sychem machines, compared to the old ones, and whether there was anything that she preferred with them.

Sarah said, "Our old washers used to have a hefty door that would open like an oven! So, in the small space that we had upstairs, it wasn't very helpful.

We love having the sliding doors on the new machines- I think they are perfect for what we have down here."

A past with Sychem

After working for many years with Sychem before the current SSD was built, Spire Bushey used Sychem's engineers for the commissioning and validation works in their previous department. Sarah said, "When the installation was taking place down there, we were still working upstairs! So we would pop down, say Hello and think about how exciting it was that this would be our new department!

We cannot speak highly enough of your engineers. They used to look after our old machine upstairs, always friendly, helpful, and happy to see you. No problem is too much for them to help us with!"

Sychem Engineers

Sychem have a team of 25+ Service and Test Engineers based across the UK, and will commission any recognised brand of decontamination equipment, autoclave or washer.

Now, it is no secret that some sites may get to know our team better than others, and over the years, the team at Spire Bushey may have developed a few soft spots for certain members of our Engineering department.

After being asked whether she had a favourite Engineer, Sarah said, "Well, now that's a tough one! To start with, they are all great and friendly, but we love Matt, he's looked after our machines from the very beginning, I'm sure he's gone up the ladder now, but when he used to do just engineering, he would be the one that came and looked at our machines- so I think we all have a soft spot for Matt."

Within the Healthcare industry, there are strict guidelines regarding the machines and how often they need to be tested. So, Spire Bushey have had the opportunity to get to know some of our Engineering team, with Sarah saying, "We love Daryll, he's just fantastic, and Ally- what a wonderful asset to your team."

When asked about the team of engineers as a whole, Sarah said, "without it sounding cheesy or anything like that, we feel like they are a part of our little working group. They are almost an extension of our already working family."

Sychem Servicing

Sychem offers a diverse range of Servicing options, available as fully customisable Service packages, including:

• Breakdown and Emergency support
• Validation & Testing
• Planned Preventative Maintenance

Each package can be tailored to meet the needs of any facility.

It can be frustrating if your equipment should ever fail, so Sychem has a team of dedicated Resource coordinators to ensure your equipment is back up and running as soon as possible.

Sarah said, "I think we have an excellent Servicing contract with you because you guys always seem to come and fix it, we get the parts that we need, so I think that whatever contract we have is perfect for whatever we need it for.

It's so easy to contact Lorraine and Amy; they are both so helpful. If there is anything they can do to help, they do it.

Lorraine is an absolute star, and Amy is just so sweet and helpful!

It's so easy when the engineers come into the facility to say this was great, that was great, but I always think about the girls in the office who are just as brilliant, in different ways. They have always been so helpful, which is really nice for us.

We always try to think about those people that get forgotten, so we couldn't be happier with everything that we receive.

It is so lovely, coming in and knowing that everything works, and supports you to do that, is good- and it does save our bacon from time to time!"

Sychem machines

At Sychem, we pride ourselves on our high levels of customer service, and the process does not end after the installation has taken place.

We asked Sarah about her thoughts on Sychem's machines, and the impact that they have had on the environment in the SSD, she said "We do our job very well, but we can only do the job so well because we have the machinery to support us to do it. So really, and honestly, without you guys, our day would not flow as simply as it does. We have hard days that we can get through with ease, because all our equipment works, and if it doesn't, we have enough machines to work around that.

So really, our days run so smoothly because we've got the excellent equipment to support us to do our job."

The team at Sychem are incredibly honoured to have received such kind words from Sarah and the team at Spire Bushey Hospital.

To find out more about Sychem's Servicing, equipment or other parts of our extensive portfolio, please contact a member of the team [email protected]