Healthcare FSDs offer sound advice

When you put a group of healthcare foodservice directors in a room and give them an hour to converse, the ideas naturally start to flow. That certainly was true earlier this year when FoodService Director brought together a dozen hospital and long-term care directors for an educational summit.

In a style similar to FSD’s popular “Steal This Idea” section, the directors shared a number of ideas for generating revenue, cutting costs, training employees and improving morale. Following are several of the suggestions they made:

Embrace technology

Two directors urged their colleagues to make use of technology. Tom Thaman, director at Eskenazi Health in Indianapolis, says he is rolling out an online ordering system for hospital employees, which could soon include a mobile app.

“You can place your order and put down what time you want to pick it up and pay online with a credit or debit card,” says Thaman. “This will help staff who have only 30 minutes for lunch to be able to come down to the cafeteria and get something quickly.”

Joe Stanislaw, corporate director of foodservice for Whittier Health Network in Framingham, Mass., advocates the use of technology to create your own POS system. “We have our own debit system,” he explains, “If a staff member puts in $20 [to his/her account] then we put in $5. That helps to get those people who would normally brown bag it to eat in our cafeteria.”

Learn from each other

When it comes to training, sometimes fellow employees are your best teachers. At ProHealth Care in Waukesha, Wis., Director of Food & Nutrition Randy Sparrow says he has created a “food pairing training program.” The program takes employees such as line servers and dishwashers—people who often have little production experience—and pair them with chefs and cooks to teach them about food. Sparrow says the program helps everyone become more knowledgeable about what’s being served to patients and staff.

Highlight key info

Bill DeCicco, director of food and nutrition at the Mayo Clinic Phoenix, reminds people that no matter how much training an employee has he or she can still forget things. “We put info that they need to know—temperature times, code blue, etc.—on a cue card that is in their badge holders, so that they always have it with them.”

Promote teamwork

Donna Medlin, director of food and nutrition at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Mo., says employees have to learn to work together as teammates. One way she encourages this is by hosting a scavenger hunt. Employees are assembled into teams and then asked to find things, such as the nearest fire extinguisher or a fellow employee who has a child in high school. Staff learn to communicate better with each other and get to know more about their fellow workers in the process.

Repurpose resources

Rich Burlingame, director of food and nutrition at Great River Medical Center in West Burlington, Iowa, suggests one way of cutting down on food waste. “The person who is wrapping up and labeling leftovers is required to tell the next-day staff at least one way the leftovers can be used,” Burlingame says. “That way, it is less likely to just sit there and end up being thrown away five days later.”

For more ideas like these, be sure to read “Steal This Idea” in FSD every month, or scroll through our list of ideas online. You also can go online to submit your own ideas for publication in a future issue.