How to Switch Your Clinic's Cleaner Without a Gap in Your Records

Most practice managers who are unhappy with their cleaner stay with them longer than they should. It is not the contract that stops them; it is the worry about what happens in between. Who has the keys? Will the new people know the rooms? What if the accreditation visit lands in the middle of it?

Those are fair worries, and they are all manageable. This is the handover we run when we take over a clinic from another provider.

Before you give notice

Read the notice clause. It is the only hard constraint. Most contracts ask for 30 days; some ask for 60 or 90, and a few roll over automatically if you miss a window. Diarise the date.

Write down what you are unhappy about. Specifically, by room if possible. It becomes the brief for the new provider and the first thing their supervisor checks.

Collect what you already have. The current scope, product list, safety data sheets, key and alarm-code register, and whatever records the current cleaner has given you. If they have never given you records, that is worth noting too.

Choosing who comes next

Get a walkthrough at the end of a clinic day, not first thing in the morning. Ask every provider the same questions: employees or subcontractors, who holds the keys, what products, how visits are recorded, how often a supervisor inspects, and what the notice period is. Our GP clinic cleaning checklist is a fair benchmark for the scope.

The 30 days

Day 0: overlap planning. A named supervisor from the new provider walks the practice with you and agrees a written scope room by room, including the line between the cleaner's work and your clinical team's.

Key and alarm handover. The outgoing provider returns keys and fobs on their last day; you change or re-issue alarm codes; the new provider signs for what they receive, with named holders. Do not let keys pass directly between cleaning companies.

Products. The new provider supplies their product list and safety data sheets before the first clean, so your records are updated on day one rather than whenever someone remembers.

First night. The supervisor attends. The cleaner who will be there every night is introduced to the site and the checklist.

First week. Supervisor attends daily. Anything you flag becomes a fix the next night, not a conversation.

Day 7, 14 and 30. Formal inspections, scored, with photos, shared with you. After day 30, the site moves onto the normal inspection cycle, every three weeks in our case.

Keeping the records continuous

The risk practice managers worry about most is a gap in evidence: an accreditation surveyor asks for the last three months of cleaning records and one month is missing or in a different format.

Two things prevent it:

1. Get the outgoing provider's records before they leave, in whatever form they have them. Make it part of the exit.
2. Make sure the new provider's records start on night one. Our cleaners sign in and out of every visit on our app inside a geofence around the practice, with a photo, so the attendance record starts automatically the first night rather than when a paper checklist gets set up.

Put a short note on file: the date of the changeover, who the outgoing and incoming providers were, and where each set of records lives. It answers the question before it is asked.

What it costs you

Honestly, an hour for the walkthrough, an hour for the scope, a few minutes a day in the first week answering questions, and fifteen minutes at each inspection. That is the whole of it for most practices.

And if the new one is not better?

Then you should be able to leave. We work on 30 days' notice, because keeping a practice by contract rather than by the work is not a business we want to be in.

We clean medical practices across Melbourne, including in Camberwell, Hawthorn, Reservoir, Epping and Craigieburn. See medical cleaning Melbourne for how we work, or book a walkthrough.