What are the Benefits of Room Service for Hospitals?

Many hospital systems today prepare their meals in large batches and then deliver them on a set schedule. Patients have less choice and only get their meals when the tray delivery cart is scheduled to be on their floor. In contrast, hotel style room service allows the patient to order off a menu and have their meal delivered generally within 45 minutes. When a hospital converts to room service, the benefits for they earn include:

Customer Satisfaction Scores – Usually an immediate increase in customer satisfaction scores to the 90% – 99% level follows the implementation of room service. Patients love the control they have in ordering off of a menu. Further, getting their meal when they want their meal is a crowd pleaser too.
Food Costs – Moving away from batch cooking and cooking only to order reduces food costs. Traditional batch cooking and serving leaves extra in the kettle and is usually not reused. Sometimes meals are delivered that are not needed. Room service preps and serves only what is needed for that day. In a typical hospital setting, the room service approach will save $100,000.00 a year per 100 census in food costs.
Employee Morale – Traditional meal delivery makes anonymous many of the FTE’s who are involved in the patients’ meals. Ownership of the system is diffused. However, room service gives employees more ownership in the end product. Taking specific patient orders, executing the meal and personally delivering the meal on time boosts employee morale. They have more meaningful contact with the patient and take pride is serving them as well.
Better HACCP Control – In the room service model, meals are individually prepared and loaded into tray cart by floor for delivery. Every ten minutes, whether the cart has 1 or 20 trays, the cart is taken to the floor and the meal is delivered. Less time for delivery means less danger of the food cooling too much and bacteria forming. Traditional trayline meal service can take twice as long thus giving you more exposure to temperature control problems.