Hospital - Food Services
They are introducing 'meals-on-demand', giving patients an opportunity to place orders for food around their schedule, rather than the hospital dictating the schedule.
Hospital Food Services
Hospital food, what comes to mind when you hear those words? For many it's the thought of cold coffee, poor presentation, bad service, served at times when you don't want it, or perhaps it was served while you were getting a test.
One hospital is working to change the way we think of hospital food by making it more like room service from a five star hotel. They are introducing 'meals-on-demand', giving patients an opportunity to place orders for food around their schedule, rather than the hospital dictating the schedule. Meals-on-demand is becoming more and more popular in patient service at many hospitals. This is a challenge in an area where batch processing has been the norm in order to keep costs down. The food is prepared in batches, served in batches delivered in batches and cleaned up in batches. The new paradigm is to go to single meal flow. The challenge is how to add the service without adding significantly more cost.
One hospital's has turned to the strategies of Lean to help them achieve this goal and Lean Healthcare Inc. was given the opportunity to work with the food services team in order to achieve this.
The team first started by Enterprise Value Stream Mapping ™ (EVSM®) the Current State process from the makeup of the trays to the delivery of the trays to the patients to the retrieval of the used trays. During this process the team observed many of the wastes identified in non Lean operations. Wastes such as waiting, over processing and even over production were observed. Patient surveys and complaints were also assessed and these comments were collected.
During the preparation and serving of the food it was like a race with the preparers pushing the servers and the servers racing in and out of rooms to keep up. Little time was available to greet the patients and answer questions; otherwise the trays of food waiting would get cold.
The next step was to create a Future State that would eliminate the wastes and produce a more Lean process. Based on the Future State, we wanted to achieve, we put together an Implementation Plan that covered the next couple of months.
It was decided the first critical step was to improve the current methods in order to prepare for the more challenging meals on demand.
At the completion of their first Future State there were significant improvements. An old unreliable piece of equipment was eliminated. This saved electrical costs as well as repair and maintenance costs.
Three positions were freed up that will be used to increase the staff that will deliver or prepare the food. The result was, they were able to add valuable resources that will be required to serve the patients when on-demand starts. Pull and flow from the preparation of the trays of food to the delivery in the wards was created in the system so that the food was always fresher and didn't have a chance to cool down while waiting or sitting in the cart.
Many of the ideas were quite simple; the Lean initiative gave employees a mechanism to voice their ideas. An end-to-end process was put in place that would allow coffee to be served hot on-demand to patients; other suggestions included ideas that eliminate plastic tops and paper products that make the service more environmentally friendly.
This transformation in the thinking and process had a positive outcome which didn't cost the hospital any additional staff or any additional equipment - in fact, the hospital freed up several staff to do value-added work and removed some old legacy equipment that required constant repair and maintenance. Most importantly, it helped to improve the quality and service to the patient/client and improved the staff morale, which is what Lean is all about.