Principles of Productivity in Food and Nutrition Services

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Principles of Productivity in Food and Nutrition Services

Productivity and quality have been well-recognized as two of the most important issues in healthcare organization management. In the 21st century as health care costs continue to skyrocket, and new models of care are initiated, food and nutrition administrators are being continuously challenged with the expanding scope of their services and need to embrace innovative tactics to improve the productivity of their operations that are consistent with their organization’s mission and vision. Historically, single-factor ratio approaches such as meals/labor hour, meals/full-time employee, trays assembled/minutes, etc. have been used as productivity measures. However, these measures can limit a manager’s assessment of the departmental performance in the framework of the organization’s values and goals.

That being said, with the increasing complexity in the health care environment food and nutrition managers need to expand their focus to a holistic vision to not only meet departmental goals, but to improve the health for their patients, visitors and staff, and need to account for human, department, organization, and environmental factors that influence their productivity. In addition, managers should analysis the factors that affect productivity on a multi-dimension level as compared to a single level factor. For example, when analyzing human factors managers need to be aware of the various factors that can affect productivity language barriers, literacy, and an aging workforce. Furthermore, food and nutrition managers need to be aware of the polarities that exist within the organization. Polarities, defined as interdependent yet potentially polar opposite pair of values, commonly exist in organizations and may include something such as providing the highest quality good/service at the lowest cost. These polarities exist and must be managed by the most optimal solution for every problem together, and individually to achieve the most positive outcome.

Moving forward, it has been proposed that food and nutrition services managers embrace the use of multiple productivity measures to balance the polarity in values that are present with operational decisions, and embrace comprehensive tools such as the Lean and Six Sigma strategies for evaluating and improving efficiency of their operations.

-KP

References

Gregoire, M. B., & Theis, M. L. (2015). Principles of productivity in food and nutrition services: Applications in the 21st century health care reform era. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 115(7), 1141-1147. doi: 10.1016./j.jand.2015.04.025

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