Becky Ellis: Community partner

At a Glance

Accomplishments

Becky Ellis has enhanced the foodservice program at Carilion Clinic by:

Partnerships are the foundation of the Carilion Clinic, a healthcare system of eight hospitals in the Roanoke, Va., area. In her role as senior director of dining and nutrition services for Carilion for the past 12 years, Becky Ellis has wholeheartedly embraced the concept at the six hospitals she oversees. She has built and enhanced her program around relationships with local educational institutions, the local chapter of the American Culinary Federation and Health Care Without Harm. She even considers the business relationship her department has with the company that operates her central kitchen to be a partnership.

Related:Confessions of Becky Ellis

“Partnerships are extremely important,” says Ellis, who has spent most of her career as part of the Carilion system, “especially for someone like me who grew up in the area. The next person who comes into one of our hospitals could likely be a relative, a friend or an acquaintance of mine, so it’s important for me to connect with the community and know the expectations of our community members for a patient experience in our hospitals. If we don’t connect with them, we lose that information.”

A lifelong resident of the Roanoke area, Ellis is the daughter of a TV journalist and a home economics teacher for the Virginia Tech extension system. “When I was growing up my grandmother lived with us, and whenever I wanted to find my mom or grandmother I would go to the kitchen because they always seemed to be there,” Ellis recalls. “They were terrific cooks, and I just fell in love with cooking.”

That shaped her decision to explore a career in foodservice, and she earned her bachelor’s degree in foodservice at Radford University, in Virginia.

“I thought that restaurants were really cool, and I worked in that field for a little while [when] I was getting my college education,” she says. “Then I found out that in restaurants you are usually working when everybody else is having fun. So as a quality-of-life decision I was very fortunate to find a job in healthcare.”

Partnerships

One of the benefits of having a long tenure with one organization is that Ellis has had the ability to cultivate the kinds of relationships that can help her department grow and innovate.

Two of those relationships are with Virginia Tech University and Virginia Western Community College. Virginia Tech supplies Ellis’ department with dietetic interns, while the Al Pollard Culinary Arts Program at Virginia Western sends culinary interns. Not only does it provide the foodservice department with young talent eager to both learn the business and share their own knowledge, “several of our employees are graduates of these programs,” Ellis notes. She also serves on the curriculum advisory committee for Virginia Western’s culinary program.

“We are also involved with and support the Southwest Virginia chapter of the American Culinary Federation,” she adds. “Our catering supervisor, Darla Mehrkens, serves as vice president of the chapter.”

Carilion’s most recent partnership has been with Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), the international coalition of healthcare organizations and medical professionals that works “to implement ecologically sound and healthy alternatives to health care practices that pollute the environment and contribute to disease.” Ellis’ department collaborated with Carilion Clinic Strategic Development (CCSD) to sign the HCWH pledge last October.

“We partnered internally with [CCSD’s] Aaron Harris-Bousch,” Ellis explains. “He implemented the farmers’ table and our community outreach, while dining and nutrition services complemented the program with health and wellness programs.”

One of those new programs is Choose Wisely. Created jointly by hospital dietitians and retail dining managers, the program promotes healthy eating by highlighting healthier foods. Those foods are indicated by the Choose Wisely Owl, a logo that looks like an owl but is shaped like an apple.

To encourage customers to “choose wisely,” the purchase of a logoed item earns the customer an entry into a weekly drawing for a free meal.

The healthy eating program also has expanded to include vending. Recently, Canteen Vending placed a 2bU vending machine in Carilion Roanoke Memorial’s Choice Plus vending area, which offers healthier snacks, and it recently added a VE Connect machine, which uses touch-screen technology to display healthy snacks and their nutritional information.

A central kitchen

Of all dining and nutrition services’ partnerships, perhaps the most surprising is the business deal Carilion has with FoodService Partners (FSP). FSP has operated Carilion’s central kitchen since 2002. Ellis explains that the kitchen was a goal of Carilion as it grew from several separate facilities into a full-fledged system.

“Twelve years ago, we started looking at having an off-site central kitchen, as part of a central laundry and materials management complex,” she says. “At the time, we did not have experience with central kitchen operation. [Consultant] Georgie Shockey came to us with the idea of using FSP.”

In addition to Carilion, FSP operates central production facilities for 22 hospitals in the Kaiser Permanente system in California and for the 15 hospitals that make up New York City’s Health and Hospitals Corp.

“It has worked out very well for us, particularly in terms of quality control,” Ellis says. “We have well exceeded the return on our investment by being better able to manage our costs and we get FSP’s expertise.”

Shockey explains that the kitchen was the first of about a half-dozen projects she and Ellis have worked on. The relationship came about as the result of a cold call Shockey made to Ellis.

“In 2001, I was attending an HFM conference at The Homestead [in Hot Springs, Va.], and after the conference I went to visit Carilion.” Shockey says she came away impressed with Ellis, and the professional bonds have grown.
“Becky has a very inquisitive nature,” she notes. “She is always probing for a different viewpoint, a different way of doing things. She’s very diligent, always looking at the flow of things before she pulls the trigger on a project.”

The patient experience

With the goal of Carilion’s projects being to enhance the patient experience, Ellis and her team have most recently focused on improving the foodservice portion with a new menu and ordering system. The menu has been altered to provide the widest variety of items that a cycle menu can, while offering options for the growing number of allergy-driven and gluten-sensitive diets.

Along with the menu changes has been an alteration of the ordering system, as well as new non-skid meal trays and tableware. Diet techs now use Ultrabooks to take patients’ orders much closer to mealtimes.

“It has been amazing watching our techs learning all the technology they need for the system, and the patients really like being able to order meals right before service,” Ellis says. “We’ve implemented the program in three units at our largest hospital and are planning to expand it to the rest of the hospital shortly.”

Shockey says Ellis’ management skills have enabled the department to make so many changes. “The way [Becky] manages her team is phenomenal,” Shockey notes. “She has different managers and different levels, each with their own different needs, and she is able to give them the latitude they need while maintaining control.”

Ellis herself credits the skills of her leadership team with giving her the ability to be that inquisitive, probing soul.

“We have top-notch leaders, and I rely on them to come up with new ideas, to study the trends and be innovative,” she says. “My role is to put the pieces of the puzzle together and find the resources that will help our team succeed.”