Medical Office Cleaning in Mesa, AZ, for Clinics, Dental and Therapy Practices

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We do medical office cleaning in Mesa, AZ for the practices patients walk into every day: family and specialty clinics, dental offices, physical therapy and counseling suites. We are As It Should Be Cleaning LLC, a Mesa company that has served the Valley of the Sun since 1988, and medical office cleaning is one of the services we have always listed by name.

A practice is not cleaned like an ordinary office, and the reasons are not the ones people expect. The mop and the vacuum are the same. What changes is the line between what a cleaning crew does and what the clinical staff do, the order in which rooms are cleaned, how a disinfectant is actually used, and the care taken around patient records. This page goes through each of those. For the other kinds of building we look after in our home city, see commercial cleaning services in Mesa, AZ.

Mesa’s hospitals and the offices around patient care

Mesa has hospital campuses at both ends of the city. Banner Desert Medical Center stands at 1400 S Dobson Rd in west Mesa, and Banner Baywood Medical Center at 6644 E Baywood Ave in east Mesa (Banner Health; Banner Health). We are based in east Mesa ourselves, in the 85207 ZIP code.

Most of the cleaning a practice needs has nothing to do with a hospital, though. It happens in a suite with a front desk, a waiting room, a few exam or treatment rooms, a small lab or instrument room, a break room and one or two restrooms. Those suites sit in office parks, in strip centers next to a pharmacy or a sandwich shop, and in converted houses. Each one has a schedule that is fixed weeks ahead by appointments, and the cleaning has to fit inside it.

Which surfaces belong to the crew and which belong to the clinic

The CDC’s guidance for dental offices draws a line that works well in any practice. Clinical contact surfaces, such as light handles, bracket trays, switches on dental units and computer equipment, are the ones likely to be contaminated by spray or spatter during procedures. Housekeeping surfaces, such as floors, walls and sinks, do not come into contact with patients or with the devices used on them, and can be cleaned with soap and water, or cleaned and disinfected if they are visibly contaminated with blood (CDC).

The clinical contact surfaces are handled by the practice’s own staff between patients, often with a barrier that is changed each time. A cleaning crew arrives once the last patient has gone and looks after everything else. Writing that split down, room by room, is the most useful thing a practice can do before it hires anybody. Here is how it usually falls:

Area	Usually the cleaning crew	Usually the practice’s staff
Waiting room and check-in	Floors, chairs, side tables, the counter, door handles and push plates, trash	Forms, pens and tablets handed to patients during the day
Exam and treatment rooms	Floors, counters clear of supplies, sinks, walls and door handles, light switches, regular trash	The exam table and its paper between patients, equipment, anything touched during care
Dental operatories	Floors, sinks, cabinet fronts, regular trash	Light handles, bracket trays, unit switches, chair controls, barriers, water lines
Lab and instrument room	Floors and housekeeping surfaces, only where the practice says so	Instruments, specimens, sharps containers, the processing equipment
Restrooms	Every fixture and surface, restocking, trash, floors	A specimen pass-through, if there is one
Staff areas	Break room, offices, staff restroom, floors	Medication fridges and locked storage

That table is a starting point, not a rule. Some practices want their exam tables wiped down again at night. Some want nobody in the lab at all. Whatever the practice decides goes into the written scope, so that nobody has to guess on a Tuesday evening.

Cleaning comes first, then disinfecting, then waiting

These words get used as if they meant the same thing. They do not. The CDC puts it this way: cleaning with a soap or detergent decreases the number of germs on a surface, and disinfecting can kill harmful germs that remain on it after cleaning. The order matters because dirt gets in the way. The CDC tells facilities to clean surfaces before disinfecting them, since impurities like dirt may make it harder for the chemicals to work (CDC).

The Environmental Protection Agency’s six steps for disinfectant use say the same thing from the product’s side (EPA):

• Check the registration. Find the EPA registration number on the product.
• Read the directions. The label’s use sites and surface types say where the product may be used, and its precautionary statements say how to handle it.
• Pre-clean. Wash the surface first if the directions call for it or if it is visibly dirty.
• Keep to the contact time. The directions give it, and the surface should stay wet for the whole of it.
• Gloves and hands. Wear gloves and wash hands after taking them off.
• Store it. Close the lids tightly and keep the product out of reach of children.

The step people skip is the contact time. A quick spray and an immediate wipe looks like disinfecting and leaves the surface damp and shiny, but if the label says the surface must stay wet for several minutes, a surface wiped dry after ten seconds has only been cleaned. In practice that means disinfecting is planned: the high-touch surfaces in a room are cleaned, the disinfectant goes on, and the crew moves on to the floor or the trash while it works, rather than standing over it with a cloth.

For everyday cleaning we use non-toxic, biodegradable products, as we do in every building. A disinfectant is a separate product for a separate step. The CDC’s recommendations for health care facilities call for EPA-registered disinfectants used in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions (CDC), and many practices already have a disinfectant their own staff use in the clinical rooms. Which product the cleaning crew uses, and on which surfaces, is one of the first things to agree.

Following a patient through the office

The CDC’s health care guidance asks for high-touch surfaces, such as doorknobs and light switches, to be cleaned and disinfected more often than surfaces that are rarely touched (CDC). The simplest way to find a practice’s high-touch surfaces is to walk the route a patient takes, from the parking lot to the checkout, and note every place a hand lands. A typical route looks like this:

1. The front door. The handle or push bar on both sides, the glass beside it at hand height, and the button of any automatic opener.
2. Check-in. The edge of the counter, the clipboard ledge, a sign-in kiosk if there is one, and the payment terminal, wiped with a product its maker allows.
3. The waiting room. Chair arms and the tops of chair backs, side tables, the water dispenser, the toy bin’s lid in a pediatric office, the light switch by the door.
4. The hallway. Handrails, the scale’s platform and grip, and the door handles of every room the patient enters.
5. The exam room. Door handles on both sides, the light switch, the counter edge, the sink’s faucet and soap pump, the chair the patient sits in before the exam, and the trash lid.
6. The restroom. Door lock, flush handle, grab bars, faucet, soap and towel dispensers, the baby changing station.
7. Checkout. The counter again, and the door on the way out.

Those surfaces are cleaned and disinfected on every visit. Walls, baseboards, vents, the tops of cabinets and the backs of chairs that nobody reaches are dusted and wiped on a set schedule instead. Nothing in that list is unusual. The difference in a medical office is that it is done every time, in the same order, and the order runs from the cleanest rooms toward the dirtiest, so that a cloth used in a restroom never comes back to the front desk.

Floors, mops and cloths in clinical rooms

Exam and treatment rooms almost always have hard floors, and the CDC’s facility guidance explains why: it advises against carpet in high-traffic zones of patient-care areas or where spills are likely, and says wet carpet should be thoroughly dried and replaced if it is still wet after 72 hours (CDC). Where a practice does have carpet, usually in the waiting room and the offices, it is vacuumed with well-maintained equipment that keeps dust down, and our vacuums are HEPA vacuums.

The same guidance is specific about the tools. Mop heads are to be changed at the beginning of the day and as facility policy requires, and mops and cloths are to be cleaned after use and allowed to dry before reuse, or replaced with single-use mop heads and cloths. We work with microfiber cloths. In a practice the questions to settle are how many fresh cloths a visit takes, which ones are kept for the restrooms only, and how mop heads are changed between the restrooms and the exam rooms.

What a janitorial crew does not handle

Some things in a medical office are not cleaning jobs at all, and a good arrangement says so plainly. OSHA’s bloodborne pathogens standard defines regulated waste to include liquid or semi-liquid blood or other potentially infectious materials, items caked with dried blood that could release it during handling, and contaminated sharps. It requires contaminated sharps to go into containers that are closable, puncture resistant, leakproof on the sides and bottom, and labeled or color-coded, and those containers are to be kept upright, replaced routinely and not allowed to overfill (OSHA, 29 CFR 1910.1030).

All of that belongs to the practice and to the medical waste hauler it contracts with. So, in our arrangements, these stay with the clinic:

• Sharps containers. Not emptied, moved or swapped by the cleaning crew. We clean the floor and wall around them.
• Biohazard bins and red bags. Left in place. Only the ordinary trash and recycling bins the practice marks are emptied.
• Instruments and trays. Reusable instruments are reprocessed by clinical staff. A crew does not pick them up, rinse them or put them away.
• Blood and body fluid spills. The same OSHA standard requires surfaces to be decontaminated after contact with blood or other potentially infectious materials, under a written cleaning schedule the employer sets. Who does that, and with what, is the practice’s decision, made before the first visit.
• Broken glass that may be contaminated. OSHA says it is not to be picked up by hand but with a brush and dust pan, tongs or forceps. If we find it, we leave it and tell the office.
• Specimens, medications and the medication fridge. Not touched, not moved, not cleaned inside.

This is not a statement about anyone’s compliance. Each practice answers for its own exposure control plan and its own waste. Our part is to know where the line is, to stay on our side of it and to point out when something on the practice’s side looks like it needs attention, such as a sharps container that is close to full.

Patient restrooms

A practice’s restroom is often the busiest room in the suite, and patients judge the whole office by it. Every visit covers the toilet inside and out, the seat and its hinges, the flush handle, grab bars, the sink, faucet and counter, mirrors, the soap, paper towel and toilet paper dispensers, the changing station, the door lock and handle, the trash, and the floor from the corners back to the door. Soap, paper and liners are restocked in the way agreed with the practice.

Two things are particular to medical offices. Some restrooms have a pass-through cabinet for urine specimens, which opens into the lab: we clean the restroom side of the door and leave the inside to the practice. And many patient restrooms are accessible rooms with grab bars and wide floors, which means more surface to wipe and more floor to mop, and corners where a quick mop never reaches.

Dental and therapy offices

Dental practices

A dental office has more clinical surface per square foot than almost any other practice, because every operatory is full of equipment. The CDC expects light handles, bracket trays, unit switches and computer equipment in the operatory to be barrier protected or cleaned and disinfected between patients by the practice. That leaves the crew the floors, the walls, the sinks and the cabinet fronts, plus the reception area, the restrooms and the staff rooms, which in a dental office see a steady stream of people all day. The CDC also says cleaning and disinfecting solutions should be made fresh each day, following the manufacturer’s directions, which is easy to build into an evening visit.

Physical therapy and counseling offices

A physical therapy clinic is part office and part gym. The treatment tables, mats, weights, bands and exercise machines are wiped by the therapists between patients, and the crew cleans the open floor around them, the restrooms, the waiting area and the offices, on a schedule that leaves the floor dry before the first morning appointment. Counseling and behavioral health offices are the opposite: quiet rooms with soft chairs, rugs and a box of tissues. There the work is mostly dusting, vacuuming and trash, done with extra care for privacy, because almost everything in those rooms is personal.

Working around the appointment book

Clinical rooms are cleaned when the clinic is closed, and practices close at different times. A pediatric office may finish at five, an urgent care later, a dental office early on Friday. We offer daily cleaning that works around the client’s schedule, as well as weekly and monthly plans, and we are open Saturdays from 6 am to 5 pm and Sundays from 9 am to 5 pm as well as on weekdays, which suits practices that want the slower, deeper work done when there are no patients at all.

A few questions keep the evening visit smooth: what time the last patient is normally out, what happens when a clinic runs late, which rooms may be cleaned while staff are still charting, whether the crew comes in through the front or the back, and how the lights, thermostat and alarm are to be left.

Keys, records and patient privacy

Any office that keeps health records will ask what a cleaning crew can see. The Department of Health and Human Services addresses this directly. In its answer, janitorial services that clean a covered entity’s offices are generally not business associates, because their work does not involve the use or disclosure of protected health information, and any information glimpsed in the course of the work, such as while emptying trash cans, is incidental and permitted by the HIPAA Privacy Rule. A service hired to handle records routinely or to shred documents containing health information likely would be a business associate (HHS).

In plain terms, a cleaning crew’s job is to keep away from records, and the office’s job is to make that easy. Before the first visit it helps to settle:

• Paper. Charts and forms are put away or left face down. The crew dusts around anything left on a desk and never moves it.
• Shred bins. Locked shred consoles are left alone and are not emptied into the trash.
• Screens and keyboards. Whether staff log off and leave keyboards clear for wiping, or whether the crew skips the workstations altogether.
• Locked rooms. Which rooms the crew may enter, and which stay locked and are cleaned only when someone from the practice is there.
• Keys and codes. Who holds a key or a door code, what the alarm procedure is, and who to call if a door is found open or a key is lost.
• Your own policy. If your privacy or compliance officer has written rules for vendors, share them before the walk-through so the scope can follow them.

Getting started

Every arrangement starts with a walk-through. We come to the office, walk it with you, room by room, and give you a free estimate. It saves time if you have three things ready: the practice’s own written cleaning schedule if you keep one (OSHA expects employers covered by the bloodborne pathogens standard to have one), the name of any disinfectant you want used, and a list of the rooms the crew should never enter. How an arrangement is written up and run from there, and every service we offer besides this one, is on our commercial cleaning page.

Questions people ask