Exceptional Results in Healthcare

THE CHALLENGE

Lagging operational performance in the Food and Nutrition department of this leading American health care facility caused Executives to actively look for ways to improve patient service levels.  Carpedia was engaged to assist management in reducing the amount of food scrap, improve labor productivity and elevate the level of service in menu handling and food distribution processes.  The three main challenges included:

• Excessive lead time (24+ hours) between completing menus and receiving food
• Loose resource planning parameters causing over-production of food and over-crewing of labor
• Poor patient experience due to little interaction with staff

THE RESULTS

Taking on these three issues, the project team delivered a successful engagement achieving the required result of a 1.13 to 1 ROI.  Operationally, all three of the main challenges were addressed:

• 5% improvement in patient survey scores
• 34% reduction in production scrap
• 41% reduction in tray food and tray supply scrap
• 50% reduction in purchasing scrap
• 8% improvement in labor productivity
• Also, a continental breakfast cart and spoken lunch and dinner menu was implemented to reduce the lead time for lunch and dinner orders by several hours

The main changes contributing to these improvements included:

• Revising processes for explaining diet restrictions, ensuring tray accuracy and interacting with patients
• Installation of scrap monitoring program
• Tying food ordering to daily census count and historical meal preferences
• Creation of a staff model based on daily census and observed planning guidelines for all departmental activities
• Increasing face-to-face contact between Service Aides and patients
• Adding floral garnishing to each breakfast tray
• Extending food service operating hours to be more responsive to patient needs