Room service delivers on taste and experience

25 Jul 2023

The hospital group, which is one of the largest Catholic providers of health care services in Australia, is transforming its patient dining experience to enable high quality meals that are cooked to order for all patients.

This includes patients who are on restricted diets due to clinical requirements as well as people who have allergies or intolerances, so that they can enjoy food that will help support their recovery.

The room service menu, which has been designed by highly experienced dietitians and chefs, was first introduced at the Group’s Murdoch hospital in WA in 2020 and has now been rolled out to its hospitals in Bendigo, Geelong, Subiaco across 2022, Mt Lawley and soon to be Berwick in 2023.

This year, the menu is going to expand to additional hospitals at Geraldton, Ballarat and Frankston, with all hospitals expected to offer the new dining experience by mid-2024.

St John of God Health Care National Room Service Project Manager Scott Horn, who has worked with many room service models in his time as an international hotel General Manager, prior to joining St John of God Health Care four years ago, said “the menu enabled patients to eat what they wanted when they wanted to”.

“In room dining really transforms the experience for our patients who now have the option to choose from a really broad range of delicious meals, made with high quality ingredients and enjoy them when they are hungry,” he said.

“We have classics such as grilled salmon and butter chicken, lasagne and carbonara, as well as really popular options like burgers, and hokkien noodles with your choice of protein.”

The introduction of the room service option has also helped reduce food waste within the hospitals by up to 35 per cent.

“When we developed this new room service dining our complete focus was on what patients want and expect from a modern hospital experience,” Scott said.

“Giving patients the choice of what and when they want to eat, means we are seeing more plates come back empty which means more full bellies and more satisfied patients.

“A really pleasing benefit of this has been the huge reduction in food waste. This has driven us to continue rolling this out at all of our hospitals. Not only is it good for patients, it is better for our environment and our organisation.”