Hospital Power Players: Beaumont Hospital-Royal Oak

30. Beaumont Hospital-Royal Oak, Troy, Mich.

Licensed Beds: 1,031
Management: Self-operated
Foodservice Head: Maureen Husek, MA, RD, director of nutrition & retail services
Avg. Daily In-patient Census: 867
Avg. No. In-patient Meals/Day: 2,653
No. of Retail Dining Outlets: 6
Total Annual Retail Sales: $7.8 million
Dining/Nutrition Services FTEs: 320

The heart of Beaumont Hospital’s retail operations is a concourse area with four food venues and two retail shops. The food venues include a licensed Starbucks, the Concourse Café (hot food with rotating ethnic menu), Baker’s Deli (a typical deli but with baked goods made in the in-house bakeshop) and local vendor Papa Joe’s gourmet market.

The patient dining operation utilizes a room service model.

The hospital has a strong focus on health and wellness through both a healthy eating and healthy community perspective. Healthy eating is encouraged through a variety of education, communication, placement and availability initiatives. Menu offerings are governed by Healthy Hospitals Initiative guidelines such as balanced menus (for which a goal of a 20 percent meat reduction has already been achieved), an increase in unsweetened beverages (Beaumont is currently at 65.4 percent unsweetened beverages, that is, those with no added sugar and no artificial sweeteners) and more local purchasing (which has increased 7 percent in the past two years).

To further encourage good meal choices, healthy alternatives are placed next to comfort foods, mindful eating techniques are followed for placement of healthy product selections, digital menu boards are used to provide calorie/sodium/fat content information, heart-healthy selections are identified on all patient room service menus and only heart-healthy snacks are offered in the vending machines.

A “Beau to Go Home” frozen meal program to provide healthy meals for patients who may have difficulty preparing meals after discharge is slated to be implemented by the end of 2015.

Beaumont’s focus on a healthy community is effected through initiatives like an onsite farmers market every Thursday for staff and local community; a Market Memo program that provides vendor information, healthy recipes and product information; and an onsite teaching garden, maintained by volunteer master gardeners, that provides recreational therapy for inpatient neurology patients who come down to work in the garden beds. (Recently they have been picking cucumbers and taking them up to the floor, slicing them up and sharing them with staff.)

A strong department focus on using local and sustainable products is demonstrated through actions like an active participation in Cultivate Michigan initiatives, including Michigan product identification in retail foodservice areas using Cultivate Michigan and Pure Michigan logos/signage, spearheading a prime vendor initiative to increase the availability of local products through major distributors and weekly specials on patient menus that highlight Michigan products.

Food conservation and reuse to help ensure a sustainable food environment for the future are maintained through food waste reduction and reuse processes, food donation through the Forgotten Harvest organization and composting.