Room service hits a roadblock
When Bethany’s new skilled nursing building opened last June, the foodservice team planned to provide hotel-style room service on the facility’s short-term rehab floor. However, its foray into room service was rather short term as well.
Director of Food and Beverage Mary Schumacher says she didn’t realize how serious recovery would be for some of those residents or how under the weather they would be. Many rehab residents weren’t well enough to place food orders themselves, and team members who served as food runners ended up going room to room to take requests.
The program “never took off as it was planned,” Eggeman says.
Fortunately, as a backup, that floor had been outfitted with a neighborhood kitchen during the renovation, from which the team could serve a daily menu. So, after speaking with foodservice workers and nursing staff on the rehab floor, they decided to scrap the room service program just a month after it began.
It required some staffing adjustments, but overall, the switch to a more traditional service was better for everyone, Eggeman says.
As a side benefit, serving those residents in a central area has given them a new forum for socialization. “It’s really good for them to get out, chat with people and just get out of their rooms,” he says, adding that “things have been great since.”