Archive for January, 2011

Can you meet Diabetes Treatment with your Room Service Meal Delivery?

Monday, January 24th, 2011
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Room Service is an outstanding way to provide meals to patients.  I am a huge fan!  It’s a win-win situation.  Patients enjoy and appreciate the flexibility and control they have to order what they eat and when.  Hospital food and nutrition departments enjoy seeing significant patient satisfaction improvements while improving operational issues such as excessive late trays and better control of waste and costs.

I have noticed, however, that organizations are challenged to determine how to coordinate meal delivery with bedside blood glucose monitoring and insulin administration.  Although intensive blood glucose management is important patient care, it should not derail or deter an organization from implementing Room Service or excluding patients with diabetes from having the Room Service experience.

The first issue centers around how to communicate the carbohydrate content of the patient’s meal to the patient care staff.  The second issue is how to inform patient care staff that a patient’s meal has arrived so blood glucose monitoring can be completed.  In addition, finally, organizations struggle with what their policy should be regarding missed meals.

Tackle these issues:

  1. Organizations are looking to their food and nutrition software system to assist with getting carbohydrate information to the bedside and software systems are making this happen.
  2. Work with your technology vendor to determine how software can easily assist you in accuracy, efficiency, and seamless operational procedures. A strategic and knowledgeable technology partner will work with you to make this seamless and painless.
  3. Be sure to proactively engage an interdisciplinary team. Engage your nursing staff and dietitians upfront. Be proactive to come up with a process you can all agree on and KEEP IT SIMPLE.
  4. Check and adjust medication administration schedules in the EMR.  Insulin given off schedule because of the flexible nature of Room Service may be recorded as a “ding” on patient care staff performance.
  5. Rename food items or portion sizes to include the carbohydrate grams
  6. Don’t be limited by a diet order but use it to educate the patient and staff.
  7. Communicate a consistent and accurate way to inform the patient care staff that a meal is on the way or has arrived from the kitchen.  Methods organizations use include:
    1. call center staff paging patient care staff
    2. call center staff calling the nursing unit
    3. including a note on the tray ticket or some door/room signage to trigger the delivery staff to call the nurse
    4. deliver the tray to the nurse’s station and have patient care staff deliver the tray and complete blood glucose monitoring at that time
    5. script the call center to tell the patient to call patient care staff

There tends to be questions about whether or not to allow the diabetic patient to skip meals.  Some organizations do not allow diabetic patients to skip meals, some allow one or two meals to be missed and then they call the patient.  Being a Room Service “purist”, I have to say I prefer to let patients order at will – and, yes, I understand all the arguments to send all meals.  However, I also think this goes back to some of the reasons you do Room Service – to allow patients the choice.  Sending a patient an occasional meal they do not want seems counterintuitive.

So do not let diabetes treatment goals dampen the Room Service experience for you or your patients.  Innovative solutions are out there to keep Room Service a winner for everyone.

What challenges have you faced with your diabetic population and Room Service?  What ideas can you share for overcoming these challenges?  If you could have your food & nutrition software do one task to improve this process, what would it be?

by Donna Quirk, MBA RD LD, Clinical Nutrition Manager, Lexington Medical Center


Posted in Hospital Food Service Technology | No Comments »

What if Buddy the Elf were in charge of Customer Service?

Monday, January 10th, 2011
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My dad, who I sadly lost this year, had a saying about selecting a life profession: “Think of what you like to do, and decide if you’re going to either make it or sell it.” In its simplicity, the adage has proven itself true over and over again.

Consider the talents of artists, scientists, and engineers – all of whom can conceptualize an idea into masterpieces of beauty and/or function. How else would we have the benefits of a Renoir painting or a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright? Who would have ever imagined we could reduce a computer’s size to that of a manila envelope? Wait – who could have ever imagined a computer in the first place? To help creative souls make an actual living, it is the sellers – teachers, marketers, salesmen – who find ways to promote artistic concepts into consumer needs. If done effectively, we become excited to be part of something new or beautiful, to embrace a better breadbox by improving circumstances to a higher standard than ever before.

Historically, the sales and marketing side of business has been seen in a negative light – tough to justify expense and return, annoying and persistent personalities, etc. Yet, even if we can’t take credit for a product’s design or creation, aren’t the rest of us actually sellers? Aren’t we selling a new entrée plate in the cafeteria, or a new menu delivery system to our patients and hospital staff? Aren’t we selling an efficiency method when we promote automation of our inventory? Or, would it be more accurate to state we are sharing excitement and fun instead? Doesn’t everyone want to be “in” on the latest idea or fashion? Perhaps not, but sharing happiness and excitement is definitely a fun way to manage change.

Over the holiday season, I kept wondering how one of my favorite movie characters – Buddy the Elf – would handle customer service and sales. His innocence, and genuinely happy approach to everything, is pretty significant when one also considers outcomes. Recipients of his antics do not realize what hit them: random acts of kindness, compliments, and silliness temper the doldrums of day-to-day life.

In a recent blog by Ron Dawson (12/10/10), he cites Buddy life-lessons we can all use every day – from greeting everyone with a hug to loving the unlovable. While we can’t hug everyone in our daily business, we can treat everyone with genuine welcome. And, perhaps the hardest challenges are the most rewarding (aka the “unlovable”)? In Stephanie Wonderlin’s blog about Buddy the Elf, she identified how his skill sets – always asking questions (“Buddy the Elf, what’s your favorite color?”) and positive outlook (“You did it! Congratulations! World’s best cup of coffee! Great job, everybody! It’s great to be here.”) – help us learn our customers’ needs, along with adapting sales strategies to accommodate the target market. She reminds us that technology does not replace human contact. Surely, we haven’t forgotten that?

In the end, I think we sometimes forget who our customer really is. It could be someone calling for software assistance, or a recipe’s allergy information, or just another human being seeking to expand their knowledge. We might also forget that the majority of us are the sellers, or better yet, the educators of a challenge yet unsolved. What an awesome privilege – sharing knowledge, promoting solutions, and bringing artistic concept to reality.

Thanks for the reminders, Buddy… my favorite color is red.

by Annie Conley, Director of Client System Integration, Vision Software

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