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I was born with a congenital heart and lung disease and have been in and out of hospitals for most of my life. One thing I've always been pretty curious about is how exactly hospitals prepare food for patients. For a while, I was under the impression that most hospitals just throw pre-packaged food into the microwave until it's way past overcooked and call it a day. But I've actually had a few experiences where this isn't the case, especially more recently. I just got out of a 3-week hospital visit where every morning I was given a menu with that day's specials, usually with around three or so different options each for breakfast, lunch and dinner. They let me order from any section of the menu at any time of day, so if I was craving sausage and hashbrowns at, say, 3 in the afternoon, that was fine. And if I wasn't particularly hungry that day and ended up wanting dinner at 9 PM, that was cool too. The various specials were actually fairly elaborate, with one night having the option of butter poached lobster on a bed of risotto. I mean, I've had better versions of the same dish at various restaurants, but I'd be lying if I said this didn't end up being drat good. I also noticed that the hospital I go to most, Boston Childrens Hospital (because all my main doctors are there, including the surgeon who performed a life-saving 12-hour long open-heart surgery on me in 2011, replacing several heart and lung valves and restoring a few pathways to working condition), very recently introduced a complete renovation to their food program, where each month they have a different national or local chef work the kitchen. Apparently they've already had a Top Chef contestant as part of the program. I'm wondering if any hospital kitchen workers here could tell me more about this sort of thing. Is hospital food trending upwards in terms of quality? I know hospitals have to be extremely careful about diets, allergies, etc just because you will kill someone if you're not paying perfect attention. So I'm aware a lot of (most) patients still get fed mashed glop through a tube, but what about when a patient comes in with little to no restrictions? Is the kitchen allowed to get a little more creative? Or are places like Boston Childrens and the one I just came out of huge exceptions? Tell me what it's like to work in this environment! Interesting patient stories are cool too (within legal reason)!
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Sep 29, 2015 18:42
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| # ? May 3, 2024 06:09 |
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Paging Manuel Calavera to the thread. I think there might be another goon who posts in the Healthcare thread in the Goon Doctor forum who also works in a hospital kitchen.
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Sep 29, 2015 19:51
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I'm in hospital administration and I can say for certain that my facilities (three locally, part of a much larger health system) are all taking a much more serious look at the food we serve both to patients and visitors. ~10 years ago we started contracting food, housekeeping and a couple of other services. Our food used to be standard, completely bland muck and we changed providers about 2 years ago and what a loving difference. We do have a form of the "whatever you want, whenever you want" but it's not as flexible as some facilities. We also don't serve lobster but our competition does. What I can say is that there's an honest to god crew of chefs that design menus and are dead serious about food satisfaction. If there's something you don't like about a dish, there's a very good chance the head chef will be in your room and offer to address your issues himself. They try to serve and make everything as fresh as possible and even source locally when possible. It's honestly pretty impressive. Now if you're on a special diet, I'm not saying poo poo's going to blow you away but I've been a patient here myself a few times and even with my dietary needs, the food is lightyears beyond what it used to be. Food for staff/visitors is even crazier- the chef encourages his staff to come up with new ideas. Our main cafeteria is divided into separate stations with their own focus (we also have a Chick-Fil-A) and once or so a month the chef will issue an iron-chef style challenge to all the stations to do their best with a common ingredient. Hell, we had hokkien mee soup a few weeks back and that poo poo was awesome.
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Sep 29, 2015 20:56
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Lincoln`s Wax posted:I'm in hospital administration and I can say for certain that my facilities (three locally, part of a much larger health system) are all taking a much more serious look at the food we serve both to patients and visitors. ~10 years ago we started contracting food, housekeeping and a couple of other services. Our food used to be standard, completely bland muck and we changed providers about 2 years ago and what a loving difference. We do have a form of the "whatever you want, whenever you want" but it's not as flexible as some facilities. We also don't serve lobster but our competition does. What I can say is that there's an honest to god crew of chefs that design menus and are dead serious about food satisfaction. If there's something you don't like about a dish, there's a very good chance the head chef will be in your room and offer to address your issues himself. They try to serve and make everything as fresh as possible and even source locally when possible. It's honestly pretty impressive. Now if you're on a special diet, I'm not saying poo poo's going to blow you away but I've been a patient here myself a few times and even with my dietary needs, the food is lightyears beyond what it used to be. That's awesome. What's your policy on patients ordering in food through services like Grubhub or Seamless? Place I just left was surprisingly OK with it.
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Sep 29, 2015 21:58
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I've been thumbing through policies and I'm almost positive that there's something on record. Basically, you can order food out but you have to be able to go and get it by the ER entrance because delivery guys aren't allowed onto the units. I've heard that a lot of places won't deliver here anymore because we're very tight for parking and we've had delivery vehicles get ticketed for blocking lanes and so on. But if it was a grubhub person and they parked in the garage and it wasn't after visiting hours, they could probably walk right onto the unit and no one would care. Of course it would be an issue if the food was contrary to the ordered diet but families sneaking in food is way more common.
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Sep 29, 2015 22:18
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Yeah in my experience the Grubhub guy actually came to my room and dropped off the food himself. I was worried that he and I were breaking like 10 rules all at once. But the staff seemed OK with it, granted I didn't have any diet restrictions.
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Sep 29, 2015 23:29
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| # ? May 3, 2024 06:09 |
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My own personal experience after a handful of multi-day hospital stays in the past couple years is that it mostly depends on the area you're in and how much money there is. The nice hospital I was at in Santa Fe with horrible pancreatitis/gallbladder stuff had this amazing menu with custom pizzas, etc etc. I could not eat, however, as that's apparently how they treat pancreatitis and then I had surgery. Meanwhile, the one in rural-er New Mexico that I stayed in for pneumonia (no air, yes food!) had... well, imagine a bland hospital take on Mexican or Tex-Mex. It was loving horrible.
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Sep 30, 2015 00:18
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