Dining on Demand Goes Solo

Julie Jones

March 6th, 2013  

In some ways, it felt like I was sending my first child to school for the first time today.  Dining on Demand has been our “baby” for so many years, now our program has to fly solo.  We have spent countless hours on the details, reviewed foods and menus, investigated hundreds of pieces of equipment, developed technology, changed staff and staffing models, all in preparation for opening day of patient room service delivery.  Drew Patterson, our Culinary Director, told me he didn’t sleep last night. He said the dreaded "what if it doesn’t work like we planned?" thoughts kept going through his mind.   

Today was a point in a journey that's been made up of many small steps to get tot his pooint. At the end of the day, we were very proud of what our team was able to vision and implement.  While we won’t know the impact on patient satisfaction officially for a few months, the patient and nursing unit feedback has all been very good.  We will continue to work through many operational issues but it felt good to have one hospitality center open.  Only seven more to go!