Pillow Talk

on January 6, 2012 at 11:13 am

These days in Canada there’s a growing interest in Room Service for patient feeding, an idea that promotes all day meal service using touchtone phones or touchscreen television systems to request meals. Bedsides feature extensive menus and patients can select what they want and when they want it with meal service guaranteed within 40 minutes. Trained diet technicians vet the meal request and the tray is assembled ‘a la minute’ (at the time of ordering) at a central kitchen, as foods are prepared to order for maximum control and freshness. This patient-focused approach has proven popular in the United States for years but is just taking hold here in Canada.

With a public healthcare system that holds operators accountable, it’s vital that food managers provide more for less. Room service is too expensive to manage and sustain over time, particularly for 100% of the patients. It can be done at smaller rural hospitals and children’s hospitals, as well as in large hospitals but only within certain wards such as Oncology and OBS. Health care food service providers are intrigued with the possibilities, but how to adopt the system, keep budgets in check and maintain patient satisfaction?

To keep costs in check, many Canadian Hospitals are opting to implement a Spoken Menu rather than a full fledged Room Service program. Here, patients select meals from a well presented and professional a la carte menu. They often select their lunch and dinnner choices in the early morning and this allows the facility to prepare their meals in a cost effective for delivery later in the day. Due to the nature of face to face interaction and a sense of control over the dining experience patient satisfaction is greatly improved. Because the spoken menu generates tallies early in the day, operators can continue cold plating processes and control costs.

Many options are being reviewed today and advice from many across the country who have researched new meal delivery styles such as Room Sercice and Spoken Menu is to start at the pillow and work back to the kitchen when considering a revision in delivery styles – Pillow Talk. This method challenges the status quo and starts fresh thinking. It is a revolution within our healthcare foodservice whereby managers stop thinking about the imposed restrictions and rather understand what the patient needs are and how they can be met. Managers are realising that one operational service model does not fit all and that technology today can assist in helping them operate multiple styles of service under one roof and thus, within one budget. In boosting customer satisfaction and improving employee wellness, attitudes all along the food chain are improving.

From this technique we may see a Room Service process evolve for one or two wards with a spoken menu for the balance of the hospital or perhaps some wards would be best suited for a bulk service at ward level with choice and service within 2 minutes.

Burlodge has been at the forefront in developing tools, equipment and systems that are helping today’s operators plan for a better tomorrow. Operators can leverage Burlodge’s main meal delivery equipment in many flexible ways while enjoying the benefits of other innovative systems and equipment Burlodge has developed to implement all different styles of meal service – sometimes with just one type of equipment.