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A Delicious Improvement: Room Service Brings More Choices, Improved Menus to NMC
Think back to the last time you were a patient in a hospital. How was your appetite? Were you hungry when they brought your meals? Did you get enough, or too much to eat? Most importantly—how was the food?
In a delicious and affordable improvement effort, Northwestern Medical Center (NMC) has launched a Room Service program for patients. Not just for hotels anymore, the concept of adding hospitality services like Room Service to hospitals has been gaining popularity in recent years. The concept behind these services is to make patients feel more comfortable and reduce stress. Patients will rest and heal better because they are getting the nutrition their bodies need, says Lisa Clark, NMC’s Restaurant & Catering Manager.
“Room service empowers patients to select the type of food they like, when they prefer to eat, in a portion that reflects their appetite,” says Lisa.
The new initiative has been in the active planning stage for several months. To fully implement the program, two new chefs were hired, bringing the chef staff to three. Additional chef staffing allows for a chef to be in the kitchen during all meals.
The new chef team includes the addition of Executive Chef Jonathan Hebert and Chef Aaron McCormack. These new employees are New England Culinary Institute (NECI) graduates and bring a variety of experience and a lot of enthusiasm to the team. They join Chef Amy Woodward, who has been the lone chef in NMC’s Restaurant & Catering Department for three years.
Chef Aaron is now Courtyard Café Chef, responsible for meals in NMC’s restaurant, serving staff and visitors. Chef Amy has transitioned to being the Room Service Chef, responsible for the meals served to patients through this new program. As the Executive Chef, Chef Jonathan steers the culinary direction of the department, oversees the production of all aspects of food, and coordinates all meeting and banquet services.
The chef team has worked in cooperation with the hospital’s dietitians, Kay Tran and Leslie Gardzina, to develop a total of eight new menus (including a children’s menu) designed to meet the specific dietary needs of patients in a hospital. In order to implement the new menus, new equipment was added and the kitchen flow was reorganized.
With just a month under its belt, Clark says the Room Service program is already a huge success. “One patient actually said that the food was better than any restaurant in St. Albans,” beams Clark.
Joseph Garrison, a 55 year old patient in NMC’s Step Down Unit from Swanton, spoke very highly of the new program on Thursday this week. Garrison has been a patient at NMC before, as recently as October of 2009, just before room service was implemented. “Before, you got what you got,” said Garrison. “It wasn’t a bad thing, but it was what it was. Now, you look at that whole menu, and you can go any way you want—there are a lot more choices now.”
Garrison says his favorite menu options have been the roast turkey dinner, the baked haddock, and the pasta with meatballs. “It’s almost close to Mamma’s,” grinned Garrison.
“It’s a big improvement,” he adds. “I eat more instead of leaving it on the tray and sending it back.”
Reduction in food waste was one of the key drivers of the Room Service program, said Clark. She says that in a traditional hospital meal program, patients had very few choices on the menu and were delivered their food trays when it was time for a meal, regardless of if patients were hungry or not.
In the new program, patients order their meals when they are hungry. For patients who need assistance placing food orders due to dietary restrictions or other reasons, a Menu Host will visit the patients’ rooms to help make food selections. Within 40 minutes of their order, a freshly prepared meal will be delivered.
Clark says that the combination of the additional chef coverage with patients having the ability to order meals when they are hungry has already shown a reduction in food use and food waste, resulting in a reduction of food cost. The drop—even below an already reduced budget figure—is due to using more raw foods and reducing waste in all areas, including patient foods.
Clark says that before Room Service, 40% of food on patient meal trays was wasted for a variety of reasons—whether for lack of appetite due to a procedure at the time the meal was delivered, or lack of interest in available choices, or even too much food being delivered to suit the normal appetite of the patient.
For Kayleigh Costella of Richford, a 23 year old woman who delivered her third child—a girl, Bailey—at NMC on Wednesday this week, the new room service program is definitely an improvement. “I do like this system better,” said Kayleigh. “This way, you can call when you are hungry, not just because it’s 8:00 a.m. or noon.”
Kayleigh says the quality of the food has improved too. “As far as food quality goes, it’s 100% better than it used to be,” she said. “The quesadilla was really good. My breakfast was amazing.”
Clark says that the most popular menu items so far appear to be the roast turkey dinner, the surf & turf, and the crab cakes. Patients are also appreciating the ability to make special requests of their meals. For Garrison, he requested that they cook his carrots longer so they would be softer for him to chew. “I asked for them to be softer, and they did,” Garrison said with a smile. “They work with you around the menu.”
“I’m so excited that we’ve been able to bring this level of service to our patients,” said Clark.
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