Waste not, want not

The Dietary UBT in the Northwest is making small improvements with big returns to reduce duplicate patient trays

FRIDAY, APRIL 9, 2010 :: By Jennifer Gladwell

UBT co-leads Judy Nichols, nutrition assistant, SEIU local 49 and Michelle Kerr, supervisor.

Advice to other teams: “Let the UBT know of any concerns, big or small,” advises Judy Nichols, labor co-lead and nutrition assistant with SEIU Local 49.

Background: 

After the room service program began, staff members discovered a problem: The Room Service Status reports in KP HealthConnect, which show whether the patient is eligible to participate in the room service program, were not always in line with the information that was generated with the departmental software. This resulted in duplicate patient trays.  

According to Michelle Kerr, supervisor of the department and management co-lead, the problem was that the system didn’t always recognize patients who were eligible for room service as being eligible. “This would cause a duplicate tray,” she explained, “because patients that cannot participate get a tray automatically sent to them with pre-selected foods.”

The result was about seven duplicate trays for every meal.

This created plenty of opportunity for frustration for the nursing staff—patients weren’t getting trays they ordered or too many trays were being delivered. It was frustrating for dietary staff, because they had system information that wasn’t consistent. And patients were experiencing poor service.

But by taking the time to compare the KP HealthConnect Room Service Status report against the list generated from Dietary department’s software, the dietary staff has been able to reduce to number of duplicate trays.

“The result of this change has been encouraging,” Kerr said, “and it makes the work environment less stressful for our staff.”

Questions?

Is there an opportunity to apply this team's work to your own? Contact Judy.L.Nichols@kp.org or Michelle.J.Kerr@kp.org if you'd like to learn more about how the team accomplished its work.