Client Success Story - Saint Andrew Life Center
Saint Andrew Life Center provides seniors with independent living, assisted living, and intermediate nursing care in a beautifully landscaped ten-acre setting. Residents enjoy three nutritious meals daily and can choose from participating in the center's activities or riding the Niles free bus to reach neighborhood dining and shopping. The facility offers a beauty/barber shop, a health clinic, and a beautiful chapel, which offers residents and families an opportunity for prayerful reflection. Sponsored by the Sisters of the Holy Family and the Sisters of the Resurrection, Saint Andrew Life Center offers a safe and comfortable home-like environment provided by a caring, dedicated staff.
GeriMenu Makes Food Service Easier
Saint Andrew Life Center has been using GeriMenu's Resident Meal Planning Module since 1994. Today the facility serves 175 residents.
When Tom Ryan, Food Service Director, began working at Saint Andrew, the center used a limited software program that would only print tray tickets with resident likes and dislikes. Ryan quickly discovered the benefit of GeriMenu's ability to do so much more!
Saint Andrew makes the most of GeriMenu's Resident Meal Planning Module, which allows staff to accomplish the following:
- Produce resident-specific tray tickets based on menus and residents' preferences
- Simplify serving lines with sanitary single-use tray tickets and snack/nourishment labels
- Manage day-to-day operations using a multitude of system reporting tools
- Diminish food waste and overproduction using accurate production tallies
- Save valuable time and money using GeriMenu's forecasting abilities
- Meet state regulations with software features that support HIPAA compliancy
Saint Andrew runs two menu cycles, each four weeks long. In addition to the regular menus, GeriMenu® assists Saint Andrew in planning for special events by allowing the staff to switch the standard menu with a theme or holiday menu. The scheduling process is easy, and the facility can save the menus (with the diet spreadsheets) from one year to the next.
"One of the most valuable aspects of GeriMenu is the flexibility that the program has," says Ryan. "We can tailor the programs to meet the needs of each of our resident care levels."
Results You Can See
Saint Andrew Life Center has observed measurable results in cutting meal cost and overproduction, attributing these improvements to the use of GeriMenu.
Kitchen staff formerly had to guess how many residents were on puree diets, low-cholesterol diets, etc. Now such information is generated using GeriMenu and overproduction has been cut significantly. Food costs have been reduced using GeriMenu's production reporting features, which tally information for each specific kitchen station. The software has also saved countless hours formerly spent on menu and production planning. The results are not only apparent in the kitchen! With such accurate preferences now in place, nursing staff spends less time organizing menus with the residents. Ryan notes that residents are more pleased with their meals, and they are eating better and staying healthier.
Future Plans
Saint Andrew plans to implement GeriMenu's Recipe/Nutrient Analysis, Inventory, and Purchasing Order Modules, which provide beneficial tools for vendor procurement, scaled standardized recipes, and food safety standards. They are also interested in utilizing GeriMenu's handheld interface, which can take meal selections, dining room assignments, and resident data right in the residents' rooms and upload the information to the GeriMenu system.
Satisfaction with GeriMenu
Saint Andrew Life Center has found significant value in GeriMenu. "I highly recommend GeriMenu to any facility in long-term care," explains Ryan. "Your investment in the system will repay you by resulting in more-efficient employees, less wasted food, proper documentation for state inspectors, and reports your administrators can actually read!"
