Like every other business, each facet of ours (healthcare foodservice) underwent radical changes with updated policies and practices as the pandemic stretched across the globe. It would be commonplace for one day’s updated policy to negate everything we put in place the day previous. The next day would also require recalculating and updating, feeding into a practice we called the pandemic pivot.

The owners of Metz Culinary Management recognized a need in Florida to provide meals to organizations and businesses that require large quantities of food, especially considering the significant growth in Florida’s senior population.

Intermountain Medical Center (IMC) serves as the flagship hospital for Intermountain Healthcare. In October 2020, the Murray, Utah, facility made the transition to room service style of feeding for patients from a more traditional tray service approach to patient feeding.

“We’re doing a cost analysis to decide if we need a preventive maintenance program and making extending equipment life a priority.”

MetroHealth Main Campus Medical Center, Cleveland

When the COVID-19 pandemic invaded the U.S., hospitals had to restructure their facilities to handle the infectious patients and close down of all nonessential units such as elective surgery. Foodservice responded with innovative solutions to the new patient censuses, fewer retail foodservice customers and changing staffing needs. Healthcare leaders also dealt with donations, community contributions and staffing.

Operators must remain ready to respond if they receive an influx of COVID-19-infected patients in the future.

Following her 15-year position as director of Food and Nutrition at Pottstown Memorial Medical Center in Pennsylvania, Mary Cooley, RD, turned her attention to senior care.

“Despite all the chaos, hospital patients with or without COVID-19 must receive food at least three times a day,” says Martha Rardin, MS, RD, CD, FAND, director of Nutrition and Dietetics and the diabetes coordinator, at Hendricks Regional Health in Danville, Ind.

Cafeteria and retail sales fell dramatically at most hospitals starting in mid-March. In mid-June when some hospitals resumed elective surgeries and more medical and administrative staff returned to working on-site, various facilities started to report an uptick in sales.

The Association for Healthcare Foodservice recognized the accomplishments of several of its members and business partners with a series of annual awards.

Bill Marks began his foodservice career early, working at an ice cream shop outside of Philadelphia at the age of 16. While in college, he became the student manager for campus foodservice operations. He also worked for contract food management companies for 20 years and learned to
manage large multiservice operations.

Martha Rardin has been in healthcare foodservice for more than four decades. As the foodservice director and dietitian manager for all of the Hendricks Regional Health facilities in suburban Indianapolis, she oversees a $3.5 million foodservice program, which produces about 1,300 meals per day and supports in-room dining, retail and catering programs. That includes about 50 meals per day for Hendricks’ senior center and another 130 to Meals on Wheels each week.

Retail, meal kits and wellness reign in healthcare foodservice.

Balancing customer satisfaction and the bottom line means operators walk a tightrope as they apply a cornucopia of ingenious solutions to persistent challenges.

Healthcare foodservice directors apply strategies in response to their administrators' mandates. Those strategies reach far into all facets of their department, including patient services, retail operations and labor management. They must find a balance between keeping customer satisfaction high while containing costs to meet healthcare executives' financial performance goals.

Cultivating a healing environment for patients, visitors and staff, this café and lounge bring a new dimension to sustainable dining.

It's hard to think of two things that fit together more seamlessly with overarching objectives than sustainability and healthcare foodservice.

Ask healthcare foodservice professionals about some of the challenges that keep them up at night and they will try to tell you their businesses are much like other industry segments. And, in a sense, they are right.

Intense competition among healthcare providers and increased pressure to continually improve the quality of food and services while containing and reducing costs have long been the challenges facing healthcare foodservice operators. So what’s new? The new normal is exponentially more intensively competitive with unprecedented pressure on healthcare foodservice operators to be at the top of their games.

2016 IFMA Silver Plate winner in healthcare Diane Imrie, MBA, RD, director of Nutrition Services at The University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, discusses cultural change, customer service and more.

For today’s healthcare foodservice operator, speed of service has become just as important as food quality. One veteran foodservice consultant outlines five steps that can help non-commercial foodservice operators, including those in the healthcare segment, get their customers through the service lines quicker and back to their busy lives.

Healthcare foodservice providers must dig deep into their creative wells as the wild healthcare ride becomes more tumultuous with demands for cost containment and quality improvements.

Today's innovative healthcare foodservice providers tend to be masters of multiple disciplines. Their business models often range from retail to catering to patient foodservice, with a few grab-and-go options tossed in for good measure.