Innovation in Meal Service System Increases Patient Satisfaction

Abstract

Research has demonstrated “quality of service” and “courtesy of server” have the greatest influence on impacting the patients’ overall satisfaction with food service. However, with declining healthcare dollars, the staffing of labor necessary to provide the level of service desired by patients is not feasible. In fact, most hospital food service departments have had to reduce staffing in recent years. ARAMARK Healthcare Support Services approached this challenge by redesigning the traditional food service system to create an innovative service system that would potentially increase overall satisfaction while maintaining or reducing department operating costs. With the SelectServicesm system, the traditional trayline system is streamlined and patients verbally select their entrée and beverage at the point of service with not written menus to distribute, retrieve and modify. The base menu has been engineered to meet the needs of the majority of patients with a limited number of entrée choices. Those patients on highly restrictive or transitional diets receive a pre-selected entrée with their choice of beverage. In August 1996, the University of California San Diego Medical Center met their challenge with a reduction of $300,000, including reduction of 9 FTE's, by implementing SelectServicesm. Their overall patient satisfaction has increased in the very good and excellent ranges by 20%. Since that time Desert Hospital, Palm Springs, California; Marietta Memorial Hospital, Marietta, Ohio; and Fallston General Hospital, Fallston, Maryland have implemented the SelectServicesm system and shown an increase in their patient satisfaction by 19%, 17% and 6% respectively. SelectServicesm is planned for implementation in select hospitals throughout the country.