More Choice Means Better Care

Food isn’t the first thing you think of when someone mentions a hospital but it’s an essential part of patient care. Brightshores Health System serves around 750 meals a day across its’ six hospitals. Many of those meals are based upon specific therapeutic menus and nutrition requirements.

For example, a stroke patient may need certain textures for safe swallowing and a diabetic patient will need food designed to maintain their blood sugar. Brightshores maintains 55 different therapeutic menus and monitors 165 different allergens. There’s a lot of thought that goes into each meal and a lot of variety in what gets served every day.

This year the Food Services & IT teams at Brightshores have successfully integrated a new software system across the entire organization to help streamline each patient’s nutrition needs and preferences. As a patient it means you will have more choices in your daily menu.

Nicole Ruff, Brightshores’ Registered Dietitian, was involved in implementing the new system. She’s excited “for patients to have more choices.” She noted that “nutrition is an important part of a patient’s recovery and we’re already seeing that patients are eating more of the food they are served because people are able to choose the foods that they prefer.”

Paper menus have been replaced with new digital and telephone options. During your hospital stay, a staff member will come to your room with a tablet loaded with a customized menu based on your specific dietary needs. On that tablet you’ll be able to select from a variety of choices for the next day’s meals. Patients at Brightshores Owen Sound will have the option of using their own devices to make their selections.

If patients require further help, the hospital has a new call center that patients and families can call to speak to one of Brightshores’ Diet Technicians to make adjustments to their menus. Families can also assist their loved ones by placing meal orders online from anywhere in Canada.

The new system is shifting staff from time spent manually tracking paper orders to time spent with patients making sure people are getting the foods they need and want. Staff are already feeling a difference and enjoying the extra time with patients.

“It’s been a major change for our staff team, but they’ve all been incredible,” said Jennifer Van Manen, Brightshores Manager of Support Services. “I want to thank the donors who helped pay for this system and all of the amazing frontline staff who are putting it into action.”

Great healthcare is about more than scalpels and scans. It’s about picking what you want for lunch. Great healthcare is a friendly face and a nutritious meal. Thank you for supporting all aspects of patient care at Brightshores Health System.