Hospitals & Long-term Care

Operations

Colorado Hospital doubles size of cafeteria

Colorado Plains Medical Center unveiled a newly remodeled cafeteria this week. The larger space has additional kitchen equipment, wall decals of trees and mountains, and a dining room that can seat up to 75 people.

Operations

San Diego hospital focused on making food tasty

Sharp Memorial Hospital is working with its foodservice provider, Sodexo, to create restaurant-quality food that still meets healthful food standards.

Sixty-five percent of operators say they offer gluten-free items for customers. Sixty-three-percent say they buy the majority of these items from outside vendors.

The practice of adding better-for-you items into less nutritionally sound dishes is a practice employed by 46% of operators, according to The Big Picture.

A surging rat population in the cafeteria and food prep area at B.C. Women’s and Children’s Hospital has prompted management to step up rodent control efforts. But inspectors said they don’t believe rodents pose an imminent health risk.

“The goal of Sustainable Kitchens is to evaluate food and operations in both commercial and non-commercial operations and, based on those evaluations, develop systems, processes, recipes, menus, branding and training in an effort to improve quality and increase revenue.”

The University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center at Mission Bay will employ 25 robots to traverse the 800,000-square-foot hospital, carrying food trays, pharmaceuticals, and even blood and tissue samples to appropriate parts of the facility. Employees who used to make such deliveries will be assigned other, more meaningful duties, say administrators.

Providence Health & Services, based in Portland, is phasing such drinks out of its hospitals, clinics and business offices over a two-month period. According to the healthcare system, Providence would be the largest such organization on the West Coast to make such a change. The ban includes drinks sweetened with HFCS, sucrose, dextrose and even cane sugar.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine slams Greenville (S.C.) Memorial Hospital for its contract with Chick-fil-A, calling it one of the “six worst public hospital food environments” out of more than 200 medical centers surveyed. But the hospital’s administrators have taken issue with the report, calling it flawed and suggesting that the PCRM has ignored a number of steps the hospital has taken to improve patent and community health.

Fresh produce and lean proteins also form the backbone of healthy catered dishes at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., where Director of Dining Services Errol Huffman oversees up to 10 events each day.

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