Do you want to
provide food
or do you want your patients
to eat?
How room service delivers on the balanced scorecard for nutrition and food services Sally McCray*
n June 2013, Mater Private Hospital Brisbane implemented an innovative 5-star hotel-inspired food service model, allowing patients to choose their meals when they feel like it. Mater was the first hospital in Australia to offer this hotel-style room service to patients and following significant improvement in key outcomes, the service was extended across Mater’s South Brisbane campus in 2016. The response from patients has been overwhelmingly positive and it is not only changing the way patients feel about hospital food but is also decreasing waste, improving patients’ nutritional intake and adding to the organisation’s bottom line. Driven by a desire to create a better service for patients, ‘Room Service’, which enables patients to order from a personalised clinically appropriate menu, was implemented through a strong collaboration between Nutrition and Dietetics, and Food Services. Like many hospitals in Australia, prior to implementing Room Service there was a fully manual, paper-based model in place. Patients completed their menu choice well in advance of the mealtime, often with little interaction with staff. Traditional set meal times were scheduled with dinner being served as early as 5.30 pm. Many late and extra meal deliveries were required as a result of these ordering practices. Under this model, patient satisfaction with food was rated poorly during feedback surveys, their nutritional intake was suboptimal and high levels of plate and kitchen waste were also recorded.
12 | PREPARED FOOD - August 2017
www.preparedfood.com.au