As hospitals aim to ace patient satisfaction, more are ramping up their menu options for patients, according to a report from Kaiser Health News and USA TODAY.
Rex Hospital in Raleigh, N.C., recently adopted a room-service approach, enabling patients to order food at any time from an extensive menu with items such as banana-nut pancakes, Caribbean grilled chicken salad and Philly-style cheesesteaks, according to the report.
Other hospitals are building gardens to grow their own produce, inviting local farmers to sell fruits and veggies on hospital grounds and adopting more sophisticated presentation styles for meals. Some hospitals are offering menus as extensive as those found in mainstream restaurants. UNC Health Care in Chapel Hill, N.C., offers patients a menu that clocks in at 20 pages, according to the report.
Many experts say a patient's experience and their food options are closely intertwined. "I have no doubt that raising the culinary bar improves our customer satisfaction scores and elevates the overall patient experience," Chad T. Lefteris, vice president of operations at Rex, said in the report.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act tied patient experience to a portion of hospitals' reimbursement. Patient experience ratings will determine 30 percent of hospitals' total payments under the Value-Based Purchasing program. Those ratings are determined by patients' answers on HCAHPS surveys, which pose a variety of questions, including one in which they must rank their hospital stay on a scale from one to 10.
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