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May I Take Your Order?

Bedside Menu Entry program improves the patient dining experience

Speaking Their Language
Dietetic technician, Brian Fortson, D.T., uses a Palm Pilot to take a patient’s meal order. The Bedside Menu Entry program will go live next spring.

Imagine feeling ill in the hospital and having to order all your meals for tomorrow right now. Then tomorrow comes, and you feel much better. In fact, you’re ravenous, but all you have is soup. Those days will be over in University Hospital and the Cardiovascular Center when a new Bedside Menu Entry program goes live next spring.

Currently, dietetic technicians typically deliver printed menus to patients—and then pick them up when the patients finish making their selections, about 24 hours before their meal arrives.

With Bedside Menu Entry, dietetic technicians will read the day’s menu to the patient, and make the selection on a Palm Pilot. Patient menu selections can be made up to 4 hours before mealtime instead of 24 hours before.

Bedside Menu Entry keeps track of patient diets and bed changes, helps make sure food choices match the patient’s diet, tracks servings of food ordered to help limit food waste and reduces paper usage. The system even supports HIPAA compliance by eliminating recycled menus that contain patient names.

For more information, contact Deby Yonkoski, Nutrition Services associate director, Patient Food & Nutrition Services at 734-936-5199.

Comment on this article

"This was a most informative article. I would not have found out about this any other way. Technology at its best. Thank you for the information." - Francine, Anesthesia


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