Janice Carter Larson, CLLM, Vice President of Clinical Resources and Consulting for Encompass Group LLC, was named The International Association for Healthcare Textile Management (IAHTM) “2019 Lifetime Achievement” recipient along with John Sealey, a 40-year industry veteran who retired earlier this year as chief operating officer of London Hospital Linen Service Inc. (LHLS), London, ON, Canada. The Awards were held Tuesday, September 24, 2019 at IAHTM’s 2019 Annual Meeting and Education Conference held in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Each year, IAHTM recognizes an individual with its Lifetime Achievement award for his or her career-long contributions to and accomplishments in the textile industry. Joe Przepiorka, Vice President, Marketing, Encompass Group, LLC. noted about Larson, “Janice is a 40-year veteran of the healthcare industry and is a pioneer in hospital-based linen cost management consulting. For over half of her career, Janice has led a team of RN-based consultants at Encompass helping hospitals and healthcare laundries focus on linen use and utilization, saving customers well over $100 million in the process.
“Through her customer engagements and results, she is considered one of the top experts and teachers in the healthcare industry for linen and textiles use and utilization. She has authored countless articles, served on several industry and publication boards, and is regularly found on industry conference agendas.”
Larson’s ease at connecting with customers sprung from her roots in international sales in the 1980s with American Hospital Supply and Baxter Healthcare Corporation. In 1984, she pioneered Baxter’s Prime Vendor program in remote island hospitals throughout Polynesia and Micronesia, winning Baxter’s Presidents Club Award in 1989. She next joined Baxter Renal Division Business Development, where she was responsible for launching a new dialysis therapy, called hemofiltration, to major U.S. teaching hospitals. In 1991 she joined Baxter Corporate Consulting, where she led the Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) education program for the Daughters of Charity hospitals in California, while helping Baxter’s Bentley Division achieve the 1992 Baxter Quality Award.
Larson joined the Hospitex division of Baxter (now Encompass Group, LLC) in 1994 as the first Linen Cost Management Consultant, and, as the dedicated resource for the ten Southern California Kaiser Permanente hospitals, documented cost savings of over $20 million in three years. Her next assignment with the five University of California Medical Centers in Southern California produced documented cost savings of over $560K. Janice was promoted in 1997 to lead the Encompass nurse consultant team, and over the past several years has redesigned the team role, establishing a greater emphasis on clinical product field support and clinical education.
Larson holds a BA in Liberal Arts from the University of Iowa and a Certificate in Management from the USC Marshall School of Business. She has taught linen management in hospitals throughout the United States and presented at industry conferences including AHE, ALM, ARTA, CLEAN, TRSA and the Clemson University Conference on Medical Textiles, as well as the American Linen and Laundry College at Eastern Kentucky University.
She has a Certification in Linen and Laundry Management (CLLM) from the Association of Linen Management (ALM) and is a member of the Association of Healthcare Value Analysis Professionals (AHVAP) and Professional Women in Healthcare (PWH). She served on the Board of Directors for ALM, as well as the editorial board for American Laundry News and the distance learning committees for ARTA and PWH. Janice resides in Ventura, California, with her husband, Steve, and enjoys snow skiing, live music and international travel.
“Janice has been a unique and tremendous asset not only to Encompass all these years, but also to the entire industry,” said John Wood, CEO of Encompass Group. “Her pioneering efforts in working directly with the hospital linen teams to review how each piece of linen is used in every unit, measuring and consistently improving processes, has been copied by others as the foundation of linen cost management. We are very proud of her receiving this well-deserved recognition by the prestigious industry organization IAHTM.”
