Client Success Story - Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario
The Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) is committed to making a difference in the lives of children, youth, and families. CHEO has established an excellent team of highly qualified personnel, first-class treatment, and world-renowned research activities to meet the needs of young patients. As a teaching hospital, CHEO is affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa. CHEO is also partnered with seventeen other hospitals in eastern Ontario to provide specialized services, exchange knowledge, and share expertise.
Room Service to the Rescue
Children typically do not like going to the hospital. Employees of CHEO are keenly aware of this and have come up with a way to make their young patients’ experiences as comfortable as possible—with a little help from CBORD®.
CHEO implemented CBORD’s Room Service in May 2003. The service was originally offered to patients in the oncology unit and those who stayed in the hospital for one day only (e.g., chemotherapy and dialysis patients), but was expanded to the rest of the hospital shortly after.
Room Service gives patients the opportunity to order meals any time between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., and typically to receive them within twenty minutes. Room Service allows patients to eat at their convenience, resulting in fewer missed meals and faster recoveries.
CHEO has also tailored its menu to appeal more directly to its young patients. The menu keeps both children and teenagers in mind, offering items such as pizza, chicken nuggets, Kraft dinners, lasagna, and Oreo cookies, along with healthier items such as salads, mixed vegetables, fresh fruit, pickles, and even vegetarian or kosher meals. Patients and families have been thrilled with the service, and hospital dietitians are also pleased. Convincing an overly tired, nauseated child to eat anything at all is no small feat, so hospital dietitians aren’t concerned with children choosing pizza over prunes. Clear- and full-fluid diets are also available.
Increased Patient Satisfaction
The success of Room Service has been felt in all areas of patient care. Patient satisfaction scores increased from 30% to 70% in the first three months of offering the service, and now remain consistently between 80% and 85%; the hospital is saving an average of $2.00 per patient, per day due to lower levels of wasted food; dietitians are able to better monitor patients’ dietary restrictions and special needs; and CHEO has received national publicity for its pioneering efforts in hospital food service management. Most importantly, however, Room Service has been a great success with patients and their families.
“For three months, CHEO’s Food Service department attempted to implement a manual room service program but was unsuccessful,” says Bernice Wolf, Manager of Food Service and Retail Sales at CHEO. “Installation of the user-friendly CBORD Room Service system was successfully achieved in less than twenty-four hours at CHEO.”
The positive feedback about the system prompted another idea: Why not offer Room Service to patients’ families as well? A parent visiting his or her child in the hospital may spend all day and night in a chair next to the child’s bed. Leaving one’s child in such a condition, even for a few minutes to get something to eat, can be extremely difficult. Making Room Service available to both patients and their families is one example of something relatively minor making a major difference during one of the most trying situations a family may ever encounter.
The Result
Room Service from CBORD has allowed CHEO’s Food Service department to meet the unique needs of its young patients and their families. It is this act of applying specialized solutions to a specialized audience that has made the hospital so well respected, and its patients so well cared for.
