Room Service: Hospitals Hope It’s Better, and Can Save Money

By Cheryl Welch, Star-News, Wilmington, N.C.

May 22–New Hanover Regional Medical Center is figuring out what ingredients it needs to cook up room service.

For the past six months, hospital administrators explored the idea of offering hotel-like room service to patients. They’ve crunched numbers and traveled to check out the service in action at hospitals in Iowa City and Chicago.

With the support of the hospital’s board of trustees, the first phase of room service implementation is on the front burner.

Donna Bost, vice president of support services, said about $180,000 is being built into the hospital’s proposed 2006-07 budget.

That money would be used to renovate the Cape Fear Hospital kitchen and provide food- ordering software for both Cape Fear and New Hanover Regional hospitals.

“That’s our first step,” Bost said. “Our hopes, our plan is to get that implemented in early 2007.”

Once the process is perfected at Cape Fear, room service could migrate to New Hanover Regional, where about $2 million in kitchen renovations would be needed so it could accommodate the made-to-order style of room service. The idea is that room service would be offered there in 2008-09, when the hospital’s $190 million expansion project featuring a new Women’s and Children’s Center is completed.

Offering hotel-quality room service in hospitals is a fairly new trend in health care, stemming from a renewed focus on customer service. According to a 2005 survey performed by the National Society for Healthcare Foodservice Management, about 17 percent of hospitals nationwide offer room service, and more are working toward the offering.

Here’s how “At Your Service” would work locally if the proposal goes forward:

MENUS would be printed for patients, personalized based on dietary restrictions.

PATIENTS would call the kitchen any time from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. to order what they’d like.

HOSTS or hostesses who take the call will suggest items and take the order.

COOKS will prepare the meals to order (no assembly line here).

MEALS will be delivered to the patient’s room within 45 minutes.

The service would cost the same as those three square meals a day delivered on carts to rooms now, but Bost said the hospital might save money on food costs because people would eat what they ordered and there would be less food waste. A tentative menu lists more than 75 food items, including strawberry-topped Belgian waffles, cheese sticks, pizza, fried chicken and pecan pie.

Healthy items such as grilled chicken, salads and fresh fruit are also available and will be the only options for some patients.

Ultimately, though, hospital administrators say “At Your Service” is a way to make patients happy.

“The patients and the families very much appreciate the individuality of choices as well as the time of their meals,” Bost said. “We’re very excited about the possibility of moving forward with it.”

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