Australia's First Room Service Implementation

Aim

The aim of these studies was to comprehensively evaluate the nutritional intake, plate waste, patient satisfaction and patient meal costs of room service (RS) compared to a traditional hospital foodservice model (TM).

Benefits

• Improvement in patient nutritional intake
• Improvement in patient satisfaction
• Reduction in plate waste
• Reduction in food costs

Background

Hospital food service provision is increasingly being scrutinized in the cost constrained and patient centred healthcare environment to reduce costs, as well as to reduce the environmental impact of foodservice waste. Patients nutritional intake is also important in the context of malnutrition prevalence and associated negative clinical outcomes in healthcare facilities.

Evaluation and results

A retrospective analysis of quality assurance data audits was undertaken to assess patient nutritional intake in a pre-post study design to assess primary outcome measures of nutritional intake, plate waste, patient satisfaction, and patient meal costs before and after the room service implementation.

The private hospital study reported an increased nutritional intake, improved patient satisfaction and reduced plate waste and patient meal costs with RS compared to TM.  The public hospital study reported similar improvements in all key outcomes.

Lessons learnt

The redesign of hospital foodservice models is increasingly a focus to drive improved patient satisfaction and cost savings, but also to influence clinical outcomes associated with nutritional intake. The significant focus on evidence based clinical care within healthcare should also apply to foodservice model re-design, with the expectation of improvements in key measures including clinical outcomes, as well as organizational efficiency and cost effectiveness measures.

Systematically measuring key outcomes associated with improvements in foodservice models allows for a balanced, evidence-based approach to foodservice model evaluation and redesign.

Further Reading

Jandonline Article