I’m fortunate to be in a position to help others now through a fellowship program that my employer is offering in conjunction with the Institute for Diversity in Health Management.  It’s been my job to shepherd this program and it is great to have our inaugural class of fellows on board.

Our first class at ARAMARK Healthcare, includes four Fellows, from some of the country’s leading healthcare administration graduate programs who are being mentored by executive preceptors at some of the top hospitals in the U.S., including NorthShore University HealthSystem Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; The Methodist Hospital in Houston and Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Fellowship work kicked off this past July and each of the four Fellows is working on projects within their host hospitals. The group also is combining on a project to study asymmetrical paternalism as it relates to how behavioral economics can motivate healthy food choices in a hospital dining setting.

When we were structuring the program, I was fortunate to get to spend some time with executives who were very committed to the fellowship process.   As an example, Tony Armada, FACHE, President and CEO of Henry Ford Hospital and Health Network was very supportive and made many suggestions which we incorporated into the program.

The Fellowship agenda also includes educational programs on diversity.  Fred Hobby, the president of the Institute for Diversity, who helped shape the structure of this program, told me that ” When you have someone of a diverse profile in a C-Suite level position, their representation of the community at large helps to minimize the disparity of healthcare delivery because they understand the specific needs of the people who are visiting their hospital.”

The application enrollment period for the second year of the Fellowship is concluding this month and the program and four new fellows will be named shortly for the 2010-2011 project work.  If you know anyone that is interested in applying for the fellowship, they can visit www.aramarkhealthcare.com to download the application.

It is interesting if you think about this as it relates to HCAHPS, because HCAHPS does not measure satisfaction with food.   This thought prompted the following question from an executive at the ACHE Congress in March, “If HCAHPS doesn’t care about food service, why should I be concerned about our food satisfaction scores?  I’d rather put our hospital’s resources into areas that are measured.”

My friend at Press Ganey, Deb Paller, Vice President Physician & Employee Business Unit shared the following analysis of items with the highest correlation with “Likelihood to Recommend.”

Food did not make the list. Deb confided, though, that it appears that at the extremes … very bad food, or excellent food, seems to have an impact.

More clarification was brought by an April/May 2009 article in the Journal of Healthcare Management entitled Patient Satisfaction: Focus on The Excellent (note ACHE password required) by Koichiro Otani, PhD, associate professor, Division of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University–Purdue University, and several executives at BJC Healthcare.

The purpose of this study was to find out what influences adult patients to rate their overall experience as “excellent.” The study used patient satisfaction data collected from one major academic hospital and four community hospitals.

“The increasingly competitive nature of the healthcare market makes it more important than ever for healthcare organizations to focus on “excellent” patient satisfaction ratings,” write the authors.

Furthermore, attribute importance is a relative concept.  Yes, nursing care and staff care were stronger than food and room attributes.  But this does not mean that food and room are not important.  Food and room are very important attributes to improve and were statistically significant components.

“Considering the nature of a hospital stay, it makes sense for patients to put a higher value on staff and nursing care than on room and food,” said the authors.  I agree – people don’t come to hospitals for the food and courtesy.  However, providing for the basic human needs of food and kindness, in a clean environment, in the most stressful of situations if done exceptionally, says much to patients and doing it in a way that earns excellent marks can make a difference.  I talked to Dr. Otani about the study.  He said: “When competing hospitals provide the same level of quality nursing care and staff care, food or room have a strong potential to make a difference in overall satisfaction.”

Which brings me back to the comment that started this thought from Todd Linden.  If satisfaction with your staff and nursing care, food service, and room is Excellent…you’ve got a better shot at being rated Excellent overall … and staying one step ahead of your competition.

So, “does food matter?” I believe that it absolutely does.