OSUWMC's Nutrition Master Plan Realized!

Julie Jones

October, 2013

On September 24th, 2012, the construction project supporting our Nutrition Services master plan officially began. The Plan was crafted in 2006 with our consultant partners, Ruck Shockey and Associates and JEM Associates.  I actually started preliminary work in 2004 setting the stage for consultant partners given the magnitude of some of the changes required. Some of the keys to our success:  patience, persistence and outside champions.

With the addition of a new 400 bed inpatient tower in plan development, Wexner's Nutrition Services couldn't support the additional growth without making major changes.   Funding in healthcare is challenging and we needed to be able to tell our story.  In our case, we were fortunate to find a champion in our CFO for University Hospitals and Ross Heart Hospital, who adopted our cause.  He would tell our story (and the need for our renovation) to all who would listen and helped us craft a multiyear capital budget plan to address the needs.  The funding for our project took a few years to secure; we were patient in waiting but persistent in stating our needs.

Then the hard work of design started.  I didn’t know we would need to make so many decisions in what seemed like a very short time.  The design for the project took about 1 year to finalize.  We know we’ve made mistakes but hope they will be minor in the whole scope of the project.