Sustainable Dining, At a Hospital Near You

VANCOUVER, Wash. — Two hospitals in Clark County, Washington, have been exploring ways to support local growers and offer fresher and healthier food options to patients and visitors. It’s part of move toward relying on increasingly local, and oftentimes sustainable, farms. It’s also part of a national trend toward improved experiences for those who come to the hospital as patients or visitors, or, in some cases, as diners.

There is already an interested market for firms that help groups convert traditional food services to more sustainable methods, often including serving foods grown or raised by small or mid-sized producers, as opposed to buying in bulk from large distributors.

One of the many challenges to such a conversion is adapting the menu to seasonal availabilities. Another is that ordering fresh, local and sustainably-farmed foods tends to cost more, although experts say that it doesn’t necessarily have to cost significantly more. Even with the additional costs, however, hospital officials are feeling the pressure to change.

In the case of Vancouver’s Southwest Washington Medical Center, named one of The Green Guide’s top 10 green hospitals, the changes may soon go beyond the food they consume to include the food they don’t: The facility is looking to implement a composting program to divert nutrient-rich waste to farms and nurseries, as opposed to landfills.

Along with greener practices often comes a higher dining standard. In 2005, the medical center hired a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., to serve as corporate chef, while at Legacy Salmon Creek Hospital, a sauté cook prepares meals to order while the customers look on.

According to hospital officials, the trend toward restaurant-quality food at hospitals is driven by baby boomers, who eat out at restaurants more than their parents’ generation.

While the two facilities are aware that part of their patients’ satisfaction will come from their dining experiences, another factor is the price of that experience. Entrees at both hospitals rarely exceed $8. According to officials, the hospital ends up subsidizing parts of the food service operation, at least in part because the costs of food service are comparatively low, next to the very costly operations costs on the clinical side.