The Miami VA Healthcare System has an advanced food production system. The Nutrition and Food Services (NFS) uses a cook-chill system using a blast chiller. Meals are prepared three days in advance and kept at a food bank. For instance, the meals that will be served on Monday are prepared on Friday. The food bank has all meals separated by breakfast, lunch and dinner, and all containers are clearly labeled with the product name and use by date. The food bank refrigerator maintains an internal temperature of between 33-36 ° F. The NFS has a three-week cycle menu that is used for the production of meals as well as the tally guide report provided to the cooks and food service workers in charge of the preparation area (M. De la Cera, personal communication,
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When a diet has been prescribed by the assigned Doctor or Registered Dietitian, the Health Technician visits the patients to assess food preferences; Likes, Dislikes, and Allergies (LDAs). The Health Technician also gets the patients’ meals requests for three weeks and enters all of the information into Computrition (foodservice software use in the NFS). The day of preparation DCC prints the tally guide reports and provides them to the cooks and food service workers in the preparation area. Three days after preparation, DCC reprints tally guide reports from Computrition and hands them over to the cooks who then add any single serve items necessary and update totals. Nourishments and snacks are assigned through Computrition by the Health Technician or dietitian. I was able to see how this process is done through Computrition (attachment assigning nourishments in computrition). The employee assigned to nourishment preparation receives reports from DCC for the 10AM, 2PM and 8PM nourishments and gathers supplies in amounts that are adequate for the day’s assembly. A graphic representation including the kitchen layout, tray-line, ICR, and food bank is attached (Appendix kitchen …show more content…
Tray delivery for each meal has a cut-off time (Appendix or attachment tray-line start and delivery). When a diet is entered after cut-off time for the next schedule meal period, the patient is prompted to request a late tray. Thus, trays needed after normal tray delivery time should be requested as a late tray. Every shift a food service worker is assigned to where they are going to take the trays. The goal of NFS is twenty minutes per cart delivery. Each cart holds 20 trays. They use two forms of identification to identify each patient. The two identifiers can either be patient’s name and wristband or patient’s name and date of birth. Once food is delivered to the patient, the same food service worker who delivered it goes back an hour later to retrieve the tray (M. De la Cera, personal communication, January 18, 2017). In case that the patient does not want to eat the food at the moment or the patient is not in the room the tray is taken back to the kitchen and stored in the late cart. Then, when the patient calls for their food the tray is sent back to the room.
NFS uses the B-Pod Burlodge meal delivery system. The pod consists of a central divider wall creating two distinct sections on one tray allowing for food on one side to be heated and the other side to be cooled (Burlodge, n.d.). Hot foods need to be reheated to reach an internal temperature of at least 165° F. The rethermalization
When a diet has been prescribed by the assigned Doctor or Registered Dietitian, the Health Technician visits the patients to assess food preferences; Likes, Dislikes, and Allergies (LDAs). The Health Technician also gets the patients’ meals requests for three weeks and enters all of the information into Computrition (foodservice software use in the NFS). The day of preparation DCC prints the tally guide reports and provides them to the cooks and food service workers in the preparation area. Three days after preparation, DCC reprints tally guide reports from Computrition and hands them over to the cooks who then add any single serve items necessary and update totals. Nourishments and snacks are assigned through Computrition by the Health Technician or dietitian. I was able to see how this process is done through Computrition (attachment assigning nourishments in computrition). The employee assigned to nourishment preparation receives reports from DCC for the 10AM, 2PM and 8PM nourishments and gathers supplies in amounts that are adequate for the day’s assembly. A graphic representation including the kitchen layout, tray-line, ICR, and food bank is attached (Appendix kitchen …show more content…
Tray delivery for each meal has a cut-off time (Appendix or attachment tray-line start and delivery). When a diet is entered after cut-off time for the next schedule meal period, the patient is prompted to request a late tray. Thus, trays needed after normal tray delivery time should be requested as a late tray. Every shift a food service worker is assigned to where they are going to take the trays. The goal of NFS is twenty minutes per cart delivery. Each cart holds 20 trays. They use two forms of identification to identify each patient. The two identifiers can either be patient’s name and wristband or patient’s name and date of birth. Once food is delivered to the patient, the same food service worker who delivered it goes back an hour later to retrieve the tray (M. De la Cera, personal communication, January 18, 2017). In case that the patient does not want to eat the food at the moment or the patient is not in the room the tray is taken back to the kitchen and stored in the late cart. Then, when the patient calls for their food the tray is sent back to the room.
NFS uses the B-Pod Burlodge meal delivery system. The pod consists of a central divider wall creating two distinct sections on one tray allowing for food on one side to be heated and the other side to be cooled (Burlodge, n.d.). Hot foods need to be reheated to reach an internal temperature of at least 165° F. The rethermalization