There’s a growing trend among hospital food service operations that is focused on changing the way patients, employees and visitors eat every day. As the nature of care moves from treatment to prevention, health care professionals stress the importance of starting by offering better food. By removing sweetened drinks and high-calorie, fried foods from menus and bringing healthier choices to food courts, hospitals are hoping to make it easier for the populations they serve and the greater community to make food choices that lead to better nutrition and less diet-related, chronic disease. To encourage healthier lifestyle and dietary choices, hospitals are highlighting healthy menu options for patients and offering room service that allows patients to order meals on-demand. By offering fresh, locally-grown produce, hospitals support community health and the local economy.
Michigan hospitals like St. Joseph Mercy in Ann Arbor and Henry Ford Hospital in West Bloomfield have removed the deep fryers from their kitchens and established on-site greenhouses to provide their hospital food service programs with fresh produce, and house clinical and community education programs. By educating the community and making healthy food more accessible, hospitals hope to improve long-term outcomes for patients and reduce hospital readmissions.
When it comes to offering healthier choices, hospitals are often bound by budgetary constraints that make it difficult to strike the proper balance between maintaining food service profit margins and meeting benchmarks for food quality and patient satisfaction. Hospitals can find the important balance by automating dietary office and food service operations with software that streamlines operations, reduces waste and reduces costs while giving patients greater control over meals and improving patient satisfaction. Patients who have the freedom to order meals when they are awake, pain-free and hungry are better nourished and recover faster, lowering care costs and reducing readmission rates.
Vision Software is a leading provider of software solutions that streamline dietary office and food service operations for hospitals. With applications that support Nutritional Intake Assessment, Room Service, Patient Meal Ordering, Tray Tracking, Patient Menu Checking and a wealth of other customizable features, you can serve fresher, more appetizing meals on-demand, giving patients greater control over meals while ensuring safety and proper nutrition. Tray Tracking helps identify lags in service that can cause productivity losses and affect meal quality. Vision Software uses HL7 interfaces to seamlessly share information between dietary orders and patient charts, eliminating tedious keyboard entry and saving you money. Vision Software has 30 years experience meeting the needs of the health care food service industry. Call 629.777.8989 or fill out the form in the sidebar to schedule your free demo today.