Denise Richardson's first thought when she went to St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center for a leg burn was that she could not survive another round of hospital food.
"I told my mom, 'You're going to have to bring me take-out food all the time. There's no way I'm eating there,'•" the Toledo woman recalled while recovering in St. Vincent's burn unit last week.
But unlike at St. Charles Mercy Hospital, where she had surgery a few months ago, Ms. Richardson ordered from a restaurant-style menu and got freshly prepared meals. To Ms. Richardson, St. Vincent's food tasted like home cooking, with French toast, Philly steak with provolone cheese, and deli sandwiches with firm tomatoes among her favorites.
"It's great - it really is," the 30-year-old said of St. Vincent's food. "It's not dried out."
Such "room-service" programs are popping up around the country as hospitals cater to patients in one area where everyone, no matter their diagnoses or treatments, is very knowledgeable: food.
St. Vincent was the first Toledo hospital to offer hotellike room service, starting with its Regional Heart & Vascular Center on June 5 and the main hospital a week later. The University of Toledo Medical Center, formerly Medical College of Ohio, added room service Aug. 27.
To Toledoan Oceachia Anderson, who is in and out of the hospital with sickle cell anemia, the change at St. Vincent is comforting. Ms. Anderson can have pancakes for dinner if she is hungry for them. Chicken quesadillas, beef stir fry, and fruit are other favorites.
Letting patients order what they want when they are hungry is nice, Ms. Anderson said. Previously meals at St. Vincent arrived on a set schedule, which could have been when she wasn't hungry or was out getting a test, she said.
Facing a grilled chicken breast that tastes like rubber was the last thing she wanted to worry about, the 28-year-old said.
"When you're in a hospital, you don't feel like you have control over anything," Ms. Anderson said.
Computerized systems at St. Vincent, UT medical center, and other hospitals help dietary clerks in call centers guide patients to menu items that are appropriate for restrictions they may have. Meals at both St. Vincent and UT Medical Center are delivered within 45 minutes of an order.
"I'm getting responses like 'This is great. This is like being in a hotel,' " said Charles Harrison, director of food and nutrition at UT's Medical Center, where stir fries, broiled southwestern tilapia, pizza, and burgers are popular.
"For the most part, patients are very pleased," he added.
Hospitals nationwide started adding room-service menus in the late 1990s, said Rick Wade, a spokesman for the American Hospital Association.
Computerized technology has advanced to allow for restaurant-style menus and room service in hospitals, and health-care providers started to realize patients could handle more than the typical bland food, Mr. Wade said.
"We know more about what people can tolerate," he said.
Though St. Vincent and UT Medical Center are the first in metro Toledo to offer room service, some smaller hospitals in the region joined the national trend a few years ago.
Bellevue Hospital's dietary staff, for example, started researching the room-service idea in 2000, a few years after Dennis Gnage left the restaurant/hotel food industry to work there. The hospital started offering room service in 2003 to the immediate delight of patients, he said.
"It's definitely a great thing for health care," said Mr. Gnage, the hospital's nutrition services director. "People used to make fun of hospital food."
Now patients appreciate the opportunity to order a meal, snack, and beverage whenever they want, he said.
"They're not even settled in their room and they're ordering room service," Mr. Gnage said.
Blanchard Valley Hospital in Findlay has had room service for a few years to offer patients personalized care, said Susan Jewell, the hospital's food service director.
With traditional hospital food service, patients ordered their food the day before, which wasn't always appealing, she said.
"You don't have a taste necessarily for what you ordered yesterday," Ms. Jewell said. "You have a taste for what you want now."
Fostoria Community Hospital, which is owned by Toledo's ProMedica Health System, started its room-service program in 2004. Grilled pork chops, salmon, and omelets are some of the menu options there.
At St. Vincent, which serves roughly 800 patient meals a day, customer satisfaction scores for food service have skyrocketed in the last year. Previously, meals were cooked in bulk, cooled down, and then reheated on special trays, a far cry from the current customized meals.
St. Vincent has a call center that patients use to phone in meal or snack orders to a dietary clerk, who calls up their information on a computer. Some patients need more help so clerks go to their rooms with a computerized tablet, on which dietary restrictions and other information can be accessed, and the few who are unable to order meals are given items selected for them, said Beth Dobbie, clinical nutrition manager.
Clerks can tell if patients miss meals so they can call them, and the system also keeps track of sodium levels, calories, and other nutritional information.
That has been a big help to burn victim Bob Balog of Curtice, who must consume 3,000 calories a day to help his recovery. The 51-year-old, a patient at St. Vincent since August, doesn't normally eat much and needs assistance tracking his calories.
"I have not tried everything yet on the menu, but I'm going to try it all before I leave," Mr. Balog said. "I can honestly say that there's nothing I've had that's been bad."
Contact Julie M. McKinnon at:
jmckinnon@theblade.com
or 419-724-6087.
First Published November 5, 2007, 12:47 p.m.
