Room Service Improves Nutritional Intake and Increases Patient Satisfaction While Decreasing Food Waste and Cost

Room service is a foodservice model that has been increasingly implemented across health care facilities in an effort to improve patient satisfaction and reduce food waste. In 2013, Mater Private Hospital Brisbane, Australia, was the first hospital in Australia to implement room service, with the ai...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics 2018-02, Vol.118 (2), p.284-293
Main Authors: McCray, Sally, Maunder, Kirsty, Krikowa, Renee, MacKenzie-Shalders, Kristen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Food costs
Nutritional intake
Patient satisfaction
Plate waste
Room service
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Summary:Room service is a foodservice model that has been increasingly implemented across health care facilities in an effort to improve patient satisfaction and reduce food waste. In 2013, Mater Private Hospital Brisbane, Australia, was the first hospital in Australia to implement room service, with the aim of improving patient nutrition care and reducing costs. The aim of this study was to comprehensively evaluate the nutritional intake, plate waste, patient satisfaction, and patient meal costs of room service compared to a traditional foodservice model. A retrospective analysis of quality-assurance data audits was undertaken to assess patient nutritional intake between a facility utilizing a traditional foodservice model and a facility utilizing room service and in a pre−post study design to assess plate waste, patient satisfaction, and patient meal costs before and after the room service implementation. Audit data were collected for eligible adult inpatients in Mater Private Hospital Brisbane and Mater Hospital Brisbane, Australia, between July 2012 and May 2015. The primary outcome measures were nutritional intake, plate waste, patient satisfaction, and patient meal costs. Independent samples t-tests and χ2 analyses were conducted between pre and post data for continuous data and categorical data, respectively. Pearson χ2 analysis of count data for sex and reasons for plate waste for data with counts more than five was used to determine asymptotic (two-sided) significance and n-1 χ2 used for the plate waste analysis. Significance was assessed at P
ISSN:2212-2672
2212-2680
DOI:10.1016/j.jand.2017.05.014