Hostess Program serves up a better patient experience

Patients at Richmond Hospital are about to be treated more like guests when it comes to making choices about what they’d like to order for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

On Tuesday, June 16, Sodexo hostesses equipped with iPads will begin visiting patients in their rooms to take their food orders for that day. The program will be rolled-out across Richmond Hospital, with the exception of PEU, 2W, ICU, ED or with patients who have complex dietary needs or are designated NPO.

“Our new Hostess Program will provide more face-to-face, friendly and patient-centred food service,” said Gurpreet Sanghera, assistant manager, Sodexo Canada. “It will also allow us to reduce the amount of food that’s typically wasted because patients can now order exactly what they feel up to eating on any given day.”

Daily visits to patient’s rooms

With the new Hostess Program, order-taking will begin in the morning, at approximately 7:30 a.m., followed by a second sweep of order-taking in the afternoon (at about 2 p.m.), to catch patients who may have been missed in the a.m. rounds. The menu choice is entered into the iPad which sends the order to the kitchen and ensures the selection is in compliance with diet orders.

The new system replaces the former day-prior ordering process which saw patients indicate their food preferences on an order sheet. The process involved limited face-to-face contact between healthcare providers, food-service staff and patients.

To help bridge langauge barriers, hostesses will have cards that show pictures of the various food choices to ensure patients understand what they’re ordering which will increase the chance of the food being eaten and not wasted.

Richmond Hospital is the second site where Sodexo has introduced its Hostess Program. The first site to go live was Lions Gate Hospital three years ago.