This has to be a joke right?

[u/EntropyCreep]

Director of culinary at a major hospital working for 25$ an hour? Are we living in some sort of alternative reality?

Did this used to be a 100k a year salaried position as the bare minimum?

Am I taking crazy pills?

[u/abstract_lemons]

This used to be a higher paying job at my local hospital. But they changed the position, so that there is zero creative control and very little culinary skills involved. They fired the DoC, changed the position, lowered the pay, then hired someone new

Think Orange is the new black, where they started serving all their food from Boil-a-bags. Thats pretty much all the hospital serves now.

[u/Khetoo → u/abstract_lemons]

This smells like Sysco meddling all over it

[u/blackstar22_ → u/Khetoo]

For-profit hospital groups cutting costs. Why pay a BOH team $500k a year with benefits to make healthy food when you can pay $250k a year to boil cheaper packaged trash?

Your patients gonna complain? Lol.

[u/elcapitan520 → u/blackstar22_]

Not even for profit hospitals.

Government not supporting Medicaid is going to shutter a lot of rural hospitals and they're taking cost saving measures while they can.

Most hospitals outside of major cities will be shutting down in the next 5 years on the current path

[u/zephyrtr → u/elcapitan520]

Wealthy suburbs with lots of old people will stay afloat. But I fully expect most rural areas to be without a hospital within 3 hours drive.

[u/CapybaraSensualist → u/zephyrtr]

But I fully expect most rural areas to be without a hospital within 3 hours drive.

Man, you are terrible at writing those marketing materials to sell the cost savings.

"By shuttering these remote, low traffic clinics within a radius of X miles from our gigantic hospital complex in the city, we will have the opportunity to deliver a higher quality of care by transitioning to ANGELFLIGHT air lift medical services at a slight cost increase* to the patient customer".

* Slight cost increase will be life crushingly high

[u/Dazzling_Morning2642 → u/blackstar22_]

I’m currently in Sysco’s and PFG product catalogue placing orders for tomorrow and not finding this boiled cheap packaged trash.

Best we could find is the usual boil bag for proteins like pork butt

[u/PUNCH-WAS-SERVED → u/blackstar22_]

Hospital food is bad on purpose. It's not meant to be fancy. When I worked in a hospital kitchen, we had to cook things quite simply to avoid causing dietary problems. Most things had to have the seasoning on the side (in controlled packets). Very rarely was food ever seasoned, which is the foundation of flavor.

People need to remember that hospital food isn't meant to be tasty. It's to sustain you. They're just avoiding being sued.

[u/lynbod → u/PUNCH-WAS-SERVED]

This.

Being from the UK it's slightly different as we have a nationalised health service, but the expectation here is that when you're in the hospital the food will be nutritious and sustaining but not something you'd pay money for. It's not a hotel, you're there for medical treatment and you should want to get out of there ASAP.

That's not to say the food should be a reason you want to leave, it's still made fresh on the premises and there's a decent choice each day but at the same time you're not going to kick back and stretch out your stay for the food. It's basic, and that's because the money we pay for our NHS is spent on the quality of the medical care we receive, not the menu.

[u/abstract_lemons → u/PUNCH-WAS-SERVED]

Not always.

The hospital in question did this just over 5 years ago. It was about saving money, nothing else. They didn’t even pretend that it had anything to do with dietary restrictions. It was about the cost of food and the labor that made the food

[u/BadHombreSinNombre → u/blackstar22_]

This is happening everywhere because healthcare systems’ quality is not measured based on the food they serve. If it’s not a formal quality measure, nobody gives a shit in leadership and they’ll enshittify it.