Kiowa County Memorial Hospital joins 75 Kansas hospitals pledging to the Kansas Hospital Association to examine food and beverage practices.
These hospitals consider new policies that provide healthier food options in the hospital cafeteria and throughout the facility. This enhanced access to healthy food aims to positively impact hospital employees, patients and visitors, while also helping to establish norms for healthier living for the communities served.
“We’ve given our patients and employees options that include fresh salads, fresh fruits and fresh vegetables,” Molly Webb, Kiowa County Memorial Hospital dietary manager, said. “We’ve limited some of what we serve in the cafeteria. We serve less fried foods and deserts like cake. Instead people can choose a chef salad on Wednesdays or light yogurt, fruit and nutrition bars as snacks.
We’ve also stopped offering soda pop in the cafeteria. We offer Crystal Light and V8 on the line. If people want soda, the vending machines still offer it.”
Webb said there haven’t been any changes to vending machines, but more dietary changes are planned.
“It’s just a continuous effort,” she said. “We try to serve baked goods three times a week and want to take away serving gravy. We’d like to serve more lean meats like chicken and fish. We don’t want to exclude anyone; we just want to educate the staff and patients on foods that are unhealthy and give them better choices.”
The Kiowa County Memorial Hospital is working to adopt recommendations made by Healthy Kansas Hospitals, a three-year initiative that provides resources and technical assistance to participating facilities. Included in the assistance given to hospitals are on-site visits, webinars, toolkits and a Healthy Kansas Hospitals conference this fall.
The 75 participating hospitals represent 34,234 employees and 184,625 patient discharges each year who utilize the on-site amenities at the hospitals.
“So far the initiative has gone really well,” Webb said. “Everyone really enjoys fresh foods. For breakfast, all most everyone asks for a fruit bowl. Some older patients are used to a certain way of eating for a long time and the state limits what we can offer them, so we’ve tried to take things slowly. We haven’t implemented everything at once, just taken one small step at a time.”
Besides increasing the availability of healthy entrees, Healthy Kansas Hospitals have increased employee education around the topic of nutrition and diet.