On demand or room service meal ordering in large acute care hospitals

[Guest guest]

Hello,

Our large, not-for-profit, level I Trauma center and teaching hospital has a

new initiative under investigation. It's whether patients could be reliably

served meals not on a set schedule but rather on demand, whenever they want to

eat. The reason is to improve customer satisfaction. However, our food services

managers recognize that this would impact a variety of other departments,

including ours, so they have convened a couple of meetings to look into it.

The current inclination is to try to pilot it on a couple of units, such as

Peds and OB/GYN, which wouldn't bother us much because a different department

covers Pediatric therapies and we don't see many in OB/GYN. At a meeting on this

today, I was asked to check with others who work in PT/OT/SLP about whether

their facility does anything like this, or if they've tried it already and it

didn't work.

Appreciate any feedback, thanks.

Dan Gaskell

Carilion Clinic

Roanoke, VA