Ideas for Improving Hospital Food Service
Management of a hospital means prioritizing the experience that patients have overall. Your occupants are often going through difficult times at baseline, and you want to do everything you can to make their stay with you as pleasant as possible. Well-fed people are likely to be calmer and more content. Therefore, when considering the overall customer experience, you should consider what you can do to improve food service.
Redesign the Salad Bar
One way of improving hospital food service is to incorporate genuine restaurant equipment into your kitchen and dining areas. It makes sense because a restaurant is a place where people want to go, while a hospital is usually someplace that they need to go, whether they want to or not. Making the latter feel more like the former is a good way to help everyone, not only patients but visitors and staff, feel more comfortable.
One of the staples of many casual-dining restaurants is the salad bar. You can redesign this so that it looks more inviting. Not only can this help improve food service, but it can also encourage more healthy eating, which may improve overall well-being over time.
Rotate the Menu by Season
Certain foods are in season during particular times of the year. Adapt your menu to reflect this by making more seasonal food choices available. When people are accustomed to eating watermelon and strawberries in summer, pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce in the autumn, and asparagus in the spring, they start craving these foods with the turn of the seasons. Offering these dishes during the appropriate times of year helps patients to feel more at home during their hospital stay.
Seasonal food selections can benefit you and your staff as well. When certain fruits and vegetables are in season, they are less expensive because they are plentiful. You can therefore save money in your budget while making patients more comfortable.
Have Regular Testing Sessions
Tasting sessions should include existing menu items as well as any dishes that you are thinking about adding. Involve all interested hospital employees, especially the dieticians. Ask for feedback from all participants about how each item tastes and what improvements could be made. Make sure everyone involved in the study knows that all ideas will be considered and no change is too small if the end result is increased patient satisfaction.
Solicit Feedback
It’s one thing if your staff thinks the food is good, but their opinions may or may not align with those of patients. Therefore, you should also ask patients for feedback about their overall level of satisfaction with food quality and what specific changes or new additions should be made. One way of collecting this information is with comment cards. However, you may get a better and more useful response if you choose food ambassadors from your staff to talk to patients directly about the food service.
Don’t Neglect Presentation
Ensuring that a plate of food looks nice isn’t just vanity. A little extra attention paid to presentation can also make the food appear more appetizing just by improving the way it looks. This helps to encourage patients to eat everything on their plate even if they may not be especially hungry, helping to reduce food waste. It also helps to contribute to a more welcoming, home-like atmosphere overall.
Consider Personalized Tray Delivery
In some respects, it is easier if all patients receive the same food. However, it is becoming more popular to offer patients cook-to-order menu options and personalized tray delivery. Being a patient in a hospital is intimidating because there is so much that happens to you that is beyond your control. Giving patients back a measure of control by giving them choices in what they eat is empowering and helps contribute to an overall positive experience. The potential benefits may be worth a little extra effort on the part of you and your staff.
Consider hospital visitors as well. They have discretionary dining funds to spend. If you offer them their own customized menus from which to order, you can keep those funds in house, and visitors can spend more time with patients. Everyone benefits.
