BREAKOUT>>>>

Some items on Central Maine Medical Center’s room service menu:

• Buttermilk pancakes with syrup

• Veggie burger on a bun

• Turkey wrap

• Asian chicken salad with oriental dressing

• Roast turkey with trimmings

• Rice pilaf

• Sweet green peas

• Angel food cake

• Chocolate mousse

Hospital Rx: Room service
Maine hospitals are updating and expanding their menus and offering room service.
Patients phone an in-hospital call center and order from a lengthy menu when they want to eat. Meals are cooked to order and patients get their food within 45 minutes.

LEWISTON – Algernon Collins Jr. knows the routine when it comes to hospital food.

Wait.

Wait.

Limp, tasteless sandwich and Jell-O?

Wait for the next meal.

But during Collins’ latest stint at Central Maine Medical Center, the 71-year-old pulmonary fibrosis patient was delighted to find he didn’t have to wait for his meals anymore. And the food he got was food he actually enjoyed.

“My meals have been excellent, every one of them,” said Collins, whose favorites included macaroni and cheese and glazed chicken with sliced mushrooms.

CMMC is joining a fast-growing list of American hospitals offering patients an amenity once reserved for high-end hotels.

Room service.

“It’s been great. You aren’t going to have a cold potato, you know what I mean? Or a cold piece of meat. It’s hot, piping hot, when you get it,” said Collins’ wife, Eldora.

Traditionally, hospitals give patients a menu in the morning and ask them to check off what they want for lunch, dinner and breakfast the next morning. Then all patients are fed at the same time, say between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. for lunch.

That system gave patients limited choices, required them to eat at certain times – hungry or not – and forced them to choose meals long before they were ready to eat.

“We were asking them to order 20 hours in advance. It’s hard to know what you want at that point,” said Louise Hall, director of food and nutrition services at CMMC.

In an effort to make patients happier, get them to eat better and cut the amount of wasted food, hospitals across the country are offering all-day kitchen service, allowing patients to eat what they want, when they want.

Some Maine hospitals, including Maine Medical Center in Portland and Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, provide room service on select floors. Others, including Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington, are considering it.

MaineGeneral Medical Center’s Augusta campus began providing room service hospital-wide in October.

CMMC started in December.

“Most hospitals that don’t have it want to do it,” Hall said.

Patients phone an in-hospital call center and order from a lengthy menu when they want to eat. Meals are cooked to order and patients get their food within 45 minutes. If a patient doesn’t order any food during the day, the call center will call them to see if they want anything.

CMMC spent $250,000 to renovate its kitchen and upgrade its computer system for the switch. It hired additional workers to staff the room service call center from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The hospital also changed its menu, dropping such perennially scorned dishes as tuna noodle casserole and adding more modern comfort foods, like chicken quesadillas with salsa and fillet of haddock parisienne.

And patients won’t pay more for the service. Although it had to hire additional workers, the hospital expects to save money in the long run because it won’t waste so much food.

“We’re finding patients are eating everything they order,” Hall said. “They’re just much more excited about the service that’s offered to them because they feel like they’re in control of it.”

It didn’t take long for Collins and his wife to notice the difference in meals when he was admitted to the hospital last week for fluid in his lungs.

“It’s really neat. It’s very nice,” Collins said. “Before, you had to wait until 5, 6 o’clock (to eat).”

On this day, Collins ordered dinner shortly after 4 p.m. and got his food a little before 5. His meal: spaghetti, a fresh fruit and cheese plate, and two desserts – lemon meringue pie and chocolate cake.

His meals have been hotter and the food more appetizing than in past visits, he said. And he liked being able to order when it was convenient for him and his family.

“You can wait until your company is gone. That way you don’t have to eat in front of them,” he said.