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It's typically done by some healthcare administrator to justify their gravy position of going shopping for uniforms and the perks they'll get in return for steering the purchasing contract to a particular vendor.
They sell the idea to their bosses by saying it will make the employees that patients need to see easier for the patients to identify (e.g. a nurse for medications) so they won't be bothering other employees who don't want to be distracted. But then, they turn around and sometimes put males and females doing the same job in different color uniforms anyway.
It's a bunch of hooey. I've seen progressive skilled nursing units that did away with uniforms entirely. They wanted patients to see their employees as individuals, not uniformed corporate drones, to establish better healthcare worker to patient relationships which get reflected in customer satisfaction surveys. I've even seen a dinosaur of a director of nursing, who claimed uniforms were a necessary mark of professionalism, dismissed. "It's not the uniform that makes the man; but, the man that makes the uniform." where uniforms are necessary.
Reusable scrubs, wherever used, should all be processed to the same high standard of cleaning. Harmful microorganisms can be brought in from outside the healthcare facility by anyone who works there, not just patients and visitors. If they want to tell employees apart by occupation, they can wear different colored ID badges. If they want to make it easier to sort the laundry, they can use colored uniform fixtures (e.g. patch, button) which can be changed to accommodate staffing changes.
The military healthcare system manages to accomplish these things without making their employees look like a bunch of Skittles; so, how hard can it be?
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