Healthcare foodservice balances customer satisfaction and the bottom line

Foodservice teams may have thought they had reached as deep as they could into their creativity to find solutions to healthcare facilities financial challenges, but uncertainty around recent healthcare  legislation efforts suggest more challenges will be coming,  according to an article on the Foodservice Equipment & Supplies website.

"Foodservice operators must be very astute and flexible to assess moment to moment what's needed and appropriate in their environments," Paul Hysen, principal for the Hysen Group, a Northville, Mich.-based foodservice consulting firm, said in the article. "They also must be ready to take immediate action to make changes."

Regardless of the changes made, "focusing on customer service and being able to assess its effectiveness continues to be the driving force in healthcare foodservice," Georgie Shockey, president, Ruck-Shockey Associates, Inc., The Woodlands, Texas, said.

"In patient foodservice, for instance, room service works well for some healthcare systems, while others find greater success balancing customer satisfaction with cost containment using a pod system or a hybrid of the two systems," Tom Cooley, principal of TCB Partners in Quakertown, Pa., said.

Read the article.