Protecting against allergens and cross contamination of foods as well as theft of products and controlling inventory are all vital concerns of kitchen staff in hospitals and health care facilities. Food waste and theft can profoundly affect the bottom line for kitchen budgets, which are already tight. While inventory is important, patient safety is the primary concern for health care providers. Millions of adults and children suffer from food allergies. Each year anaphylaxis affects hundreds of people leading to between 150 and 200 deaths a year. These are serious concerns facing health care facilities today and proper management of these issues begin in the kitchen.
Inventory control is vital to food service preparation and directly relates to food costs. Systems can keep track of ordering, receiving and storage, and link the systems to patient’s dietary needs, preferences and possible allergens. Vision inventory software manages recipes, ingredients and inventory levels as well as food ordering schedules. Vision offers ongoing support and training for hospital staff and well as providing initial data entry for recipes and menus.
Vision Software also provides secure methods for ensuring patient safety from food allergens. From check-in to discharge, hospital staff working with the patient and kitchen staff can implement Vison’s integrated menu checking procedures that are intended to eliminate errors and support accuracy. Patients who may have life-threatening food allergies will be noted upon admission so dieticians and kitchen staff can implement the proper safety protocols. These automated features, built on your own nutrition care records, are powered by interfaces such as order entry and pharmacy and provide a comprehensive solution to patient food sensitivities. Kitchen staff and dietitians can keep track of hundreds of crucial service details, simplified in one easy-to-read dashboard screen. For patients with severe allergies, tray line prep safety procedures may require a designated working space within the kitchen to avoid cross contamination of patient food trays. The designated work space would be a separate space with its own equipment and utensils where designated staff would prepare allergen free meals that would be delivered individually to patients thus avoiding any possibility of cross contamination.
Vision Software includes allergy management tools built into their diet software that hospital staff can easily follow ensuring patient safety. The system will also alert kitchen staff of certain drugs prescribed to patients that have a potential to affect nutritional status. Identifying situations where a drug interaction may alter the absorption and metabolism of medications and send a red flag to the kitchen so they can provide an alternative meal choice.
The need is for safety, when it comes to tray line prep, is evident as more and more people become subject to food allergies. Vision Software has created and implemented food allergy tracking systems that make it easy for kitchen staff to track patients with regards to diet restrictions, allergy information, and patient likes and dislikes. Vision Software is changing the way hospitals and health care kitchen staff provide for the needs of patients.
Vision Software is the vendor of choice because of our unrivaled track record in supporting cost-effective food service management operations, its innovations in clinical nutrition management technologies, and its pioneering work in automated menu systems and inventory control.
With the help of Vision’s innovative software solutions, healthcare directors can lock down your kitchen to food waste and theft, and maximize productivity while meeting the health, safety and nutritional needs of your patients. On-site administrators are available and a part of Vision’s approach to being the leading provider of health care web-based foodservice solutions in the world.