“People think with their stomachs.”
So, Michael Thorne, the new director of food service, says offering patients room service should help attract more business to Good Samaritan Hospital.
Thorne, who was introduced to the hospital's board of governors on Tuesday night, said there's such a narrow margin between hospitals that score at the top of patient-satisfaction surveys and the rest that any slight advantage for Good Samaritan could result in a big payoff.
“We do so many things that are really great, but so do other hospitals surrounding us,” he said. “So what can we do that they aren't? What can set us apart?
“People think with their stomachs,” Thorne said, and offering them dining experiences that are “like being at the Hyatt” during their hospital stays could move Good Samaritan further up in the survey rankings.
It's not that patients now have to leave their rooms and travel down to the cafeteria for meals; meals are delivered to their rooms at specific times throughout the day.
But, Thorne said, sometimes meals are delivered when a patient is undergoing a test, and upon return the food is cold or the patient doesn't have an appetite right then, so the tray full of food is returned to the kitchen.
Or the meal may not consist of an entree and sides that the patient prefers, so the food is picked at and basically wasted.
And a lot of food is being wasted, Thorne said, as well as a lot of money.
Room service, he explained to board members, is designed to enhance patient satisfaction by allowing them “to order what they want, when they want it.”
That will make patients happier, “and a happy patient is an easier patient to care for,” Thorne said.
“And if they are eating all of a nutritious meal they will get better faster and be able to return to their homes sooner,” he said, saving patients money.
Patients wouldn't be able to order whatever they wanted for their meals; menus would provide for choices but each entree and side would be nutritious and healthy. And patients with specific dietary restrictions would have limited selections.
But the service would be the same for all: individually ordered meals delivered on demand.
Thorne said that at his prior hospital in Logansport, after he'd introduced room service on average 80 percent of the food on a tray was consumed whereas before only half the food was being eaten.
He predicted that Good Samaritan could potentially reduce its food-service costs by as much as 20 percent.
Thom Cook, the hospital's chief financial officer, said there would be some expense incurred in implementing the room-service program, including the purchase of a $111,000 dishwashing machine — an expense that was already budgeted for the food service department to replace the 16-year-old machine currently in use.
Other new equipment would be required, and a remodeling of the kitchen would be needed before the service could be properly launched.
Cook said a realistic timeline would be this fall before room service would go live.
The board approved the plan, with president Jim Zeigler also giving a big thumbs up to improvements Thorne had already made in the cafeteria. He in particular mentioned Tuesday steak nights.
“There was a line out the door the night we were down there,” Zeigler said. “And once we got our steaks it was easy to see why. And for $6, too.”