Case Study on Job Flow Improvement of Foodservice at a University Hospital

대학병원 급식업무 개선 사례 연구

Background : In order to cope with changes in the management environment at hospitals, increased interests are drawn in patient foodservice system on Continuous Quality Improvement Activity as the method of approaching a quality food service and effective management. Thus, as a part of this activity, this study was conducted to evaluate job flow improvement that was already performed and the results of that process at the dietetic department of a university hospital, focusing on improving management. Method : On February 15 of 1998. the dietetic department formed a job flow-improvement to decide on the priority of job flow improvement, and prepared specific action strategies and schedule of the priority: after a 5 month process period, job improvement achieved on June 15. 1998. Also, economic achievement of the task was evaluated through labor productivity analysis and cost-benefit analysis. Results : The patient food service system which was managed decentralized at the present hospital was centralized, some steps of the food service process were integrated, and quality of patient food was improved. Also, as a solution of the problems expected when conducting job flow improvement was made on food service equipments and utensils. The result of evaluating the job flow improvement that labor productivity improved by 18.2% compared to before the improvement and the result of the analysis of cost-benefit showed that Benefit-Cost (B/C) ratio was 2.22. showing financial merit on the investment. Conclusions : Continuous Quality Improvement Activity needs to be initiated and conducted in the future in various areas of hospital foodservice system in order to actively adopt to ever changing hospital management environment. In order to achieve this goal, many researches and more efforts need to be put in by people in charge of hospital food service management, and interests and support are needed from hospital policy makers.