Mercy Medical Center launches online food ordering and delivery to surgery waiting room

Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, recently added a new way to order food. The dining team launched online ordering and food delivery to the surgery waiting room. Now, diners can simply place an order from a new kiosk placed right inside the waiting room. Then, the food will be delivered directly to them.

The goal behind this change? To further improve customer experience. Comfort and convenience for the patient’s guests were top of mind while adding this technology, said Sara Eichenberger, director of food and nutrition services at Mercy Cedar Rapids.

“Surgery durations vary greatly, and guests often become hungry. Vending machines only provide cold, limited offerings. Ultimately, guests had to leave to get warm food. During their time away from the waiting area, the surgeon or hospital staff might have an update for the guests and sometimes they would be gone,” she said. “Online ordering and food delivery provided a perfect solution: bring food to the family members so they can remain in the waiting room.”

From a surgical perspective, it can be helpful for patients’ loved ones to be nearby during surgery, added Sara Kinkead, director of surgery center operations and hospital perioperative services.

“It is important that families are nearby when their loved ones are in surgery. Whether it be a sudden change during their care, good news from a provider who has successfully completed their surgery or simply an update on their surgical timeline, it is helpful to have family readily available in the surgery waiting room,” she said.

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This feature is currently available on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. And the response so far has been positive, with the team expecting utilization of the kiosk to increase as diners become more familiar with it.

“We have heard many positive comments about how great it is to have this service available. Understanding that this is a new service, we anticipate utilization to increase as families become more familiar with the offering,” said Kinkead.

The team uses an ordering kiosk system by Quickcharge TransACT, a dining services software suite. The program was originally designed to be a self-checkout kiosk, but the Quickcharge team assisted the Mercy Cedar Rapids dining team in configuring it to work as an online-ordering system.

Configuring the system to work the way the team wanted it to, proved to be the biggest challenge along the way. But the team successfully worked through that challenge and launched the technology.

Another challenge the team is currently addressing is demand for the service outside of its current limited hours, said Kinkead.

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“We have worked through challenges as they arise. Currently, we have limited hours of availability. We have already had guests request service in the late afternoon/evening timeframe as well. We are considering that possibility,” she said.

Moving forward, the team hopes to continue to work with diners to gather feedback about the technology.

“The system is new, so we are still learning. We are constantly requesting feedback to make sure it a successful and well-utilized service,” said Eichenberger.