Hawaiian Hospital Saves $1.5M With In-house Food Prep

Kaiser Permanente Hawaii’s Moanalua Medical Center has been saving about $1.5 million a year in food costs by bringing meal preparation in-house and allowing patients to choose when and what they want to eat as the first hospital in Hawaii to offer a room-service menu, reports Pacific Business News.

The hospital now spends about $1.1 million per year operating the kitchen, with about 18 full-time employees who take down orders from patients in a separate room and hand them off to the cooks who put the food together in an assembly line fashion. The meals are then carted to the patients within 45 minutes of when the order was placed. Between providing this mixture of the services and cutting down on food waste, the hospital saves about $1.5 million each year.

Previously, meals were prepared offsite, delivered to Moanalua and reheated before being delivered to patients.