Hospital Department Budgets: Hospital Catering Services Competitiveness Enhanced With Simple Tactics

Hospital department budgets are often squeezed, and hospital catering services often find it difficult to stay competitive with outside catering vendors. In the long run, internal catering may result in departmental savings because they dont seek the profit margin that outside companies demand. The Healthcare Management Council Partners met in an iConference (http://www.hmc-benchmarks.com/hospital/ccs.shtml) to share strategies to compete with outside catering vendors.

(PRWEB) April 15, 2004 -- Hospital catering department strategies to compete with outside catering vendors:

- Accept major credit cards. One hospital has reduced the use of external sources by 80% since they started accepting major credit cards internally.
- Market the benefits of internal services (no additional tax, no gratuity for delivery, no clean-up).
- Use hospital intranet to accept orders (can also be directed to administration for approval through intranet).
- If the catering department is in charge of cleaning the conference rooms, charge a clean-up fee for events that have used an external catering vendor.
- Host a catering open house to feature catering services and menu items and to educate staff about the true cost of outside catering services.
- Host a "Lunch and Learn" to educate administrators who have used the catering services at some point about the catering requests processes and to get feedback on catering services.
- Meet regularly with a group of executive secretaries to figure out what the catering department can do to meet their needs.
- Two facilities have separate prices for internal and external services giving internal customers a better price.

The Healthcare Management Council, Inc. is a healthcare performance improvement company that conducts hospital department manager peer networking sessions -- called HMC iConferences - to generate and share cost-saving ideas among hospitals. Learn more about HMC iConferences at HMCs Web site -- http://www.hmc-benchmarks.com/hospital/ccs.shtml

Contact: SHBurns@HMCOnline.net
The Healthcare Management Council, Inc.
Area: Hospital Performance Improvement
Web site: http://www.HMC-Benchmarks.com