Food and nutrition captions - Labor Management Partnership



In late 2009, when San Diego’s food and nutrition department learned it would be assuming all of the hospital’s meal distribution, the team decided they needed to do a major overhaul of their workflow to accommodate the increased workload. At the same time, they needed to find ways to polish their service scores.

It was a daunting task, but they managed it. One item at a time, the team improved various aspects of their operations–from streamlining the meal distribution process to enhancing the taste and presentation of the food.

As a result of all the changes, San Diego food and nutrition saw a significant jump in their customer service scores, which are based on a variety of measures including how close to mealtime a patient received food; if the food was hot when they received it; tastiness of their meal; and the interaction with the person delivering the food.

“We’ve taken on more work, but the team has more pride in their work,” said Suzanne Ingel, senior logistics clerk and unit-based team labor co-lead.

Food and nutrition staff previously passed out about 40 percent of the meal trays while nursing staff passed out the remaining meals to patients. But the distribution and related requests were competing with nurses more vital care duties. So the food and nutrition department took over passing out all the food trays.

Today San Diego’s food and nutrition services department arranges and delivers more than 300 trays of food at every mealtime.

To absorb the additional work the team took a hard look at streamlining their distribution process. They purchased vegetables and fruits that are pre-prepared to free workers and reassign them to more needed tasks and peak times.

“We figured out how long it took to pass out trays and the typical number of trays per floor or department, and assigned people accordingly,” explained Jeff Caddy, assistant director of food and nutrition services.

They also improved their communication system and armed tray passers with two-way phones so that no time was wasted by a runner going back down to the kitchen for a question or needed item. They can stay on their rounds, distributing meals.

Once they had the new workflow in place to handle the additional workload, the department turned toward their customer service style and how they interacted with patients.

“We developed a script so everyone is saying the same thing when they deliver a meal, and are identifying a patient,” Caddy said.

The department also rounds regularly on patients and nursing staff to evaluate the service they provided.

Other changes included:

• Purchasing new trays and dishware

• Refining the food presentation on the trays. “Before things were haphazardly thrown on the tray. Now they’re nicely presented so it’s more aesthetically pleasing,” Caddy said.

• Enhancing recipes and conducting regular tastings with nurses and other staff to evaluate the food’s flavor.

For more information reach management co-lead Jeff Caddy at 619.528.6299 or Jeff.G.Caddy@.

Customer service scores by the numbers

| |February 2010 |August 2010 |

|Taste of food |74.3 |78.1 |

|Polite and professional |88.5 |94.7 |

|Temperature of the food |82.7 |91.2 |

|Time food was delivered |84.6 |88.8 |

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