The Aurora Health Care Food Management team includes (front row, l. to r) Jerry Malinowski, Mary Ehlers, Maureen Petrovich, John Riegler (middle row) Bruce Parker, Rick Haas, Maria Limon (back row) Wayne Stoop and Larry Bushner.

Operating a successful healthcare dining operation is like waging a multi-front war. Your offerings have to be nutritionally sound and — increasingly — environmentally sustainable, yet customer-pleasing within rigid cost parameters. And you have to achieve that while meeting your institution's requirements for an affordable and convenient in-house foodservice that not only satisfies the basics of feeding employees, visitors and patients, but, ideally, also serves as a positive community relations tool.

On all those fronts, Milwaukee-based Aurora Health Care system has produced impressive results. The system, which encompasses 14 acute care facilities and dozens of smaller clinics, pharmacies and specialized treatment centers across Wisconsin, has developed a high-quality, customer-friendly dining service for both patients and retail customers, and one that balances the healthy, the trendy and the traditional.

It offers room service dining at almost every acute care site (one remains to be converted), while its retail cafeterias serve a daily array of choices adapted to the tastes of each specific site population. Costs in both areas are controlled, despite a somewhat decentralized food management structure (more on that below), through a centralized recipe database and centralized purchasing, monitored at the retail end by computerized site-wide POS registers that interface with the central system.

But beyond the core mission of feeding patients, staff and visitors in a cost-effective, customer-friendly system, Aurora's food management department offers a variety of services designed to generate goodwill and satisfaction all around. Among some of its many initiatives are…

• an “Adopt-a-Floor” program that sends chefs and even low-level back of house kitchen staff to patient floors to build relationships;

• the use of local brands in the cafes to connect the dining service to the community and highlight Aurora's support of local businesses;

• efforts to encourage community and collaboration among the system's unit chefs through a “chef's club” that meets regularly, not only to network and share best practices, but also to participate in a variety of community service activities;

• enhancing retail dining convenience with credit card and debit account payroll deduction payment options;

• the use of monotony-breaker and team- building events like outdoor cookouts and celebrity chef visits;

• the promotion of healthy dining through loyalty cards, posted nutritional information, onsite farmers markets, and regular special events like Wellness Wednesdays, “no fry zones,” and a “first fruit of the month” discount program;

• a commitment to sustainability through composting, recycling, a new rooftop herb garden, local sourcing of ingredients and the promotion of reusable beverage cups;

• serving the broader community through cookouts, partnerships with local charities and a longstanding involvement in a community mobile meals program in conjunction with the area's Visiting Nurses Association.

Finding the Efficiencies

The Honey Creek kiosk in the West Allis Women’s Pavilion offers locally branded organic coffees and a variety of healthful grab and go selections.

Aurora's self-operated foodservice department uses a semi-centralized management structure that consolidates oversight of its main acute care facilities — those in the greater Milwaukee area — under a regional director, while leaving community hospitals in the smaller markets under the direction of individual site managers.

At the hub of this system is John Riegler, regional director for Aurora's five hospitals (plus a psychiatric facility) in metro Milwaukee. Riegler has direct operational oversight over the unit managers in his region and also serves an informal consulting role to the other regions.

“I'm like a conductor,” he says, “the one who knows where the music's supposed to come from and gets it to come from that spot.” He also describes his role as a “resource” managers can turn to if they run into especially difficult problems.

Stepping back, Riegler sees his key role in the organization as the one best positioned to facilitate synergies across the system. “I want to make sure that there's consistency from site to site where it makes sense and that we take advantage of best practices,” he explains.

(above) West Allis Site Manager Bruce Parker with the cafe’s fruit-infused water station. (below) the carving station at West Allis’s cafeteria.

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