All-Star Spirit

There was a time when referring to a healthcare foodservice provider as an All-Star would be considered a contradiction in terms.

By Joseph M. Carbonara, Editor-in-Chief -- Foodservice Equipment & Supplies, 12/15/2006

Joseph Carbonara

There was a time when referring to a healthcare foodservice provider as an All-Star would be considered a contradiction in terms. That’s because in those days, hospital food often consisted of a slice or two of mystery meat swimming in a pool of viscous gravy surrounded by some limp vegetables and a starch. Rounding out the traditional tray were some jello and a cup of coffee.

For these reasons and others, it is hard to find a group of operators more historically maligned than the foodservice professionals charged with providing meal service to patients and visitors at the many healthcare facilities across the country. Fortunately, those days are long gone.

Indeed, today’s successful healthcare foodservice providers are the complete antithesis of their predecessors. For starters, the role of the healthcare foodservice provider has expanded considerably when compared to previous generations.

Most healthcare foodservice providers readily acknowledge that patients admitted to the hospital represent a fraction of the overall number of meals they serve on a daily basis. In fact, outpatients, family members, other visitors, doctors, staff members and vendors doing business with the facility typically represent the vast majority of the meals consumed on a medical campus over the course of most days.

And when it comes to patient meals, their primary focus is no longer just providing traditional tray service. Rather, they have become part of the healing process both through the quality and the types of food they make available to patients. The style of service has evolved considerably, too. In fact, many operations have gone to a room service approach that was once the exclusive domain of the hospitality industry. By migrating to this approach, these facilities continue to exhibit a certain level of flexibility and responsiveness that goes a long way toward driving up patient satisfaction levels.

It is easy to see how healthcare foodservice has evolved into one of the more sophisticated parts of the operator community by virtue of the fact that it has to meet the needs of a very diverse and demanding audience regularly and consistently, while on a limited budget. Furthermore, healthcare foodservice providers are no longer judged in the context of their other non-commercial peers. Rather, consumers of their food products come to the table with the same expectations for quality, consistency and creativity as they do when visiting other for-profit venues.

If you are familiar with the healthcare segment of the foodservice industry, many potential All-Stars probably come to mind as you are reading this. This past August, I had the opportunity to meet many of them while attending the National Society for Healthcare Foodservice Management (HFM) National Training Conference in Tampa, Fla. The power generated by the attendees sheds some much needed light on the day-to-day challenges healthcare foodservice operators face and the creative ways these professionals meet them.

The other point of reference my HFM experience generated is that this segment of the industry is brimming with many standout performers. And the unfortunate reality is that in no way could we capture all of them and their individual successes on our pages. So in forming this year’s All-Star roster, we cast a wide net, soliciting input from various associations, manufacturers, consultants and even the healthcare operators themselves. The final result is a well-balanced lineup of some well-known and some not-so-well-known commodities that represent the best this industry segment has to offer.

Beyond the qualities described above, members of this year’s All-Star lineup have established practices that help move this segment of the industry forward. They also manage their financial resources effectively and efficiently to help make the most of what’s allocated to them and meet the institution’s fiscal expectations.

I am confident that you will find it an enlightening and informative read.

Joseph M. Carbonara, Editor in Chief