Improving Hospital Food

Mater Private Hospital Brisbane was being challenged to deliver the optimum food choices for patients. Not only could patient satisfaction be improved, but it was difficult to predict demand for food, order food efficiently and manage the waste that was generated. Identified pain points included:

• Difficulty meeting current nutritional analysis and compliance audits: hard to monitor dietic compliance and identify those at risk of malnutrition.

• Difficulty in working towards a more cost-effective meal service: food related costs difficult to capture and seasonal management of stock often led to waste.

• Desire to avoid incidents where patient gets the wrong meal with consequences for allergies and those with religious beliefs.

• Desire to improve patient satisfaction with the variety and quality of meals provided in a competitive private hospital environment.

After a competitive vendor selection process, the CBORD on-demand meal ordering solution was implemented. This enabled patients to order meals over the phone from a tailored menu. After ordering, food is prepared ‘on demand’ and delivered to the room within 45 minutes.

The approach to evaluating benefits was challenging as there were 4 diverse groups who would be the primary beneficiaries in the hospital including:

1. Hospital nutritionists and dieticians who want to help patients eat the right diet, and sufficient calories to promote healing and avoid or treat malnutrition.

2. Food services staff who want to prepare high quality food that patients request and enjoy.

3. Executive and marketing staff who want to enhance patient experience and use the room service menu as a point of difference to other private hospitals.

4. Clinical staff who want the food service to support the patients stay in hospital – particularly long stay patients and those with complex needs by supplying enjoyable and compliant meals.

After engagement with stakeholders and the vendor, the benefit framework was developed:

A key element for of the approach was the Hospital dietetics team leading the academic evaluation of the evidence in the Nutrition and Health quadrant, the results are available here:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318087645_Room_Service_Improves_Nutritional_Intake_and_Increases_Patient_Satisfaction_While_Decreasing_Food_Waste_and_Cost

A key lesson learned during benefits evaluation was that if patients are left to decide what they want to eat, and they can do this at a time they choose, they are more likely to enjoy their meal and their nutritional intake increases. This lesson enabled the majority of benefits achieved in the framework including:

• increased patient satisfaction measured via independent Press Ganey benchmarking

• decreased plate waste

• kitchen savings and reduced food costs, estimated at $330,000 per year

Evaluation also picked up emergent benefits which had not been anticipated in the planning stage including a better ability to use fresh local produce and to identify patients who had missed meals.

The results encouraged the hospital to roll out the program more widely to other cohorts of patients, including a modified model for public patients.