ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, June 27, 1996 TAG: 9606270032
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: DANBURY, CONN.
SOURCE: STEVE SAKSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
Roscoe and Rosie each weigh 600 pounds and they're less than five feet tall, but that doesn't stop them from being Danbury Hospital's most productive workers.
For 12 hours each day, seven days a week, they haul meal trays from the basement kitchen to the patients' floors. They cost the hospital just $6 an hour each with no overtime, and they never complain.
They're not superhuman - they're not human at all.
Roscoe and Rosie are robots: computers on wheels with Danbury's 345-bed floor plan in their memory chips and visual sensors that stop them from bumping into walls - and patients.
They're examples of the innovations hospitals are using to improve food and deliver it faster while coping with tighter budgets.
At New York University Medical Center in New York City, computers keep track of hundreds of different menu items, measuring calories in the marinara sauce, the price of beans and the temperature of meatloaf about to be delivered to patients' rooms.
St. Joseph Health Center in Kansas City, Mo., decided that, rather than make deep cuts in spending for its food service, it would try to bring in more money. The hospital built a shopping mall-style food court that generates a profit, its administrator reports.
Inspiring these ideas are the continuous demands by insurers and health maintenance organizations for more efficiency and cost-conscious medicine. That means patients are spending less time in the hospital.
Hospital administrators increasingly view higher quality meals as a way to help patients recover faster.
``You've got to get the people to eat the food to get them built back up so they can go home,'' said Carol Sherman, NYU's director of food and nutrition.
So, instant mashed potatoes and mushy peas are out. In are computer-assisted kitchens using fresh meats and vegetables.
Like others, Danbury's food and nutrition director Sue Taub has faced deep budget cuts the past several years, forcing her to reduce her staff from 90 to about 65. That's where Roscoe and Rosie come in.
``They are completely autonomous units that go from one point in the hospital to another without wires on the walls, floors or ceiling,'' said Taub, who is president-elect of the American Society for Healthcare Foodservice Administrators.
Their maker, HelpMate Robotics Inc. of Danbury, has placed robots in 54 hospitals around the country, delivering meals, drugs, lab specimens, surgical supplies and medical records.
At Danbury, the robots typically deliver late trays - meals for patients who are eating outside the hospital's normal feeding schedule.
In the past, a nurse would have to be sent from the patient floor to fetch the tray - a waste of time for a $20-per-hour medical professional when a robot can do it for less than a third of the cost.
These retro versions of R2-D2 can find their way to any department, opening doors and operating elevators along the way by sending out electronic signals.
If they come upon an obstacle, their optical sensors cause them to pause, plot a way around and continue on.
On arrival at their destination, they declare ``I have completed my mission.''
Of course, the novelty of a robot delivering your meal wears off fast if the food is less than appetizing, something that hospitals risk as they cut costs.
But declining revenues have prompted many hospitals to reduce their menu choices. While it used to be three or four weeks before a meal was repeated, now it is closer to five days. Instead of a choice of several entrees at each meal, many hospitals now offer just one or two.
With patients staying for fewer days, the hospitals hope most won't notice. To minimize complaints, they're filling menus with basic ``comfort foods,'' such as roasted chicken and meatloaf, which patients favor in surveys, reports Lawanda Spotts, director of food and nutrition services at York Hospital in York, Pa.
To help maintain the freshness and quality of ingredients, Spotts and others are investing in computers to automate purchasing and inventory.
``It will tell us what to order, how much to order and how much we're taking out,'' Spotts said.
NYU Medical Center has used technology to expand its menu, not cut it.
Since 1991, the hospital has invested in cooking systems that have allowed it to put eight or nine entrees per meal on its menu, instead of two.
Patients are polled on likes and dislikes, which a computer cross-checks against any of the nearly 170 diet restrictions their doctors may order.
The computer then spits out a customized menu.
LENGTH: Medium: 92 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Ernestine McCullum (left, in left photo) and Suzyby CNBHimmelberg shop at Saint Joseph Medical Center's food court in
Kansas City, Mo. Carol Reilly (above) unloads a tray from Rosie, a
robot at the Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. color.