By Healthcare Facilities Today

Food service kitchens may look more like a science lab, with staff garbed in medical grade white robes, hair nets, and shoe covers, and patients are greeted by hostesses taking restaurant-style orders on iPads, according to an article on the Marcos Island Sun Times website.

In recent years, Lee Memorial Health System and NCH Healthcare System have improved their food service operations, from how they store it and prepare foods all the way to how it’s ordered and presented to the patient, employee or visitor, according to the article.

“Ten years ago we certainly didn’t have some of the options we have today,” the article quoted Julie Jones, the treasurer-elect with the Association of Healthcare Foodservice and director of nutrition services at Ohio Sate Wexner Medical Center. 

Lee Memorial expanded one off campus facility where it could produce food for roughly 11 properties, including seven hospitals. Culinary Solutions, it’s private label food manufacturing facility, is run by LeeSar, a subsidiary of Lee Memorial Health System and other hospitals, the article said.

By getting the work done in one facility, it cuts labor hours in one area of food production to focus on other services and projects, like the system’s newer VeggieFare, a made-to-order salad program with toppings from mango to pumpkin seeds at Cape Coral Hospital, or its new cafeteria concept called Cosmo’s Grill, the article said.

Read the article.