What is Room Service?

Restaurant-style menu.
Cook-to-order items, fast and fresh.
Comfort foods (vary by region)
Offers patients control and choice - ”What they want, when they want it!”
No set meal service times.
Available approximate 6am to 7pm or later.
Preparation & delivery in under 45 minutes.
In hotel-style room service, patients are provided with an easy to understand menu and ordering instructions. Patients dial Call Center to place meal order. Call Center staff utilize specialized Room Service software to enter patient menu selections and monitor diet order compliance. Complete meal order prints in tray assembly area. Hot and cold production staff cook and prepare food to order and place in designated area. Tray assembly staff, using consolidated order, “grabs” the hot food and the cold food, adds the condiments, beverages, flatware, etc. and performs final check of tray before placing in cart. Within a pre-defined time (approx. 10 minutes), the cart is taken to the nursing unit and the trays are served.

Why Room Service roomservice04

Significant and sustained improvements in patient satisfaction
Start-up and Incremental Operating Costs can be minimal
Competitive advantage now – Necessity in near future
Healthcare Executives want it – Now!
Nurses love it!
Patients love it!

Why Engage a Consultant When Designing and Implementing Room Service?

For the same reason most people don’t try to build their own homes.
As a result of 20 years of staffing reductions, your team no longer has time to reinvent the wheel.
To properly plan, design, & implement room service it takes approximately 750 to 1,500 man hours between your team & your consultant.
The hospital uses consultants for all their other projects. Why should food service by any different?
Implementing room service is like opening a new restaurant.
When attempting to copy another hospital’s room service program, how do you know that what they have developed is ideal?
Some of the self developed room service systems we have observed are less than ideal.

What Will DM&A Do For You?

DM&A will provide with a complete on-site room service assessment to include:

Feasibility Analysis
Cost Savings ROI
Financial Investment
Traditional Equipment Specs.
Green Production Equipment Specs.
Lease Options.
Kitchen Drawings

Did You Know?

Room Service can often be presented as a method to save money which will then coincide with your hospitals cost cutting initiatives?
There is now a “Green” method for doing Room Service? Couple this fact with cost savings and your Room Service project can come “alive” even in tough financial environments.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Wasting valuable time sourcing information that may or may not be “Best Practice”. We can provide accurate information over the phone in 5 minutes at NO CHARGE.
Presuming that Room Service is more expensive than standard meal service. Typical food and supply SAVINGS from Room Service $100K per 100 beds or better.
Attempting to sell administration on Room Service without all the accurate facts and a 10-year ROI including FTEs, kitchen equipment, design and support training.
Guessing on FTE’s required based on average benchmarks rather than exact numbers derived from a custom study conducted at your facility.
Guessing on capital equipment needed for Room Service.
Guessing on patient tray assembly and production equipment, design and layout.
Designing or reinventing a Room Service menu. We already have a menu done for you.
Using advisors who don’t specialize in room service.

Testimonial

The University of Colorado Hospital Food & Nutrition department brought in DM&A to work with us in implementing our Room Service Program. They met with our leadership group to assess our strengths and weaknesses, reviewed the kitchen set up and did some customer service training with the entire staff. Next they reviewed our room service menu and made some significant improvements both in the design and options we were offering.

On a return visit they worked with our call center, the dietitians and our culinary staff and maderecommendations for improvements in scripting, dietitian coverage and worked to improve food production and presentation. They worked with the retail staff to spruce up the decorations in the cafeterias and offered suggestions for plate presentation.

They assisted us in updating our policies and procedures and task analysis. They brought a high level of excitement that permeated our staff and they all looked forward to working with the consultants. We felt very fortunate to work with such a talented group of people and feel our entire department benefited from their knowledge, expertise and experience. In my experience in the hospitality business this was a very unique, enthusiastic and well organized group of people. Their expertise in assessing this facility was well beyond my expectation.

Mark Raymond
Director, Food and Nutrition Services