Photo Credit: Northwell Health
When Chef Tison first joined Northwell, the institution’s Press Ganey scores (a marker of how facilities are performing in various patient care metrics) were in the ninth percentile in the area of food quality. When he joined, Chef Tison joked with Northwell’s Chief Experience Officer Sven Gierlinger that he would like to get those scores to be at the 90th percentile – just adding a zero. Seven years later, Northwell is pretty darn close. But, as Chef Tison explains, “if you get great care, a clean room, good attention, a smile from the person who served your food and great food that smells and tastes good, where are you going to go?” During an interview in March, Chef Tison shared that Northwell in aggregate is at the 84th percentile, with eight hospitals, including a tertiary, achieving above the 94th percentile. Chef Tison is hopeful that all the health system’s facilities when combined will reach the 87th percentile by the end of the year. And given the health system’s start to the year, that looks promising.
Photo Credit: Northwell Health
“[The industry] served pretty bad food for such a long time that we still have people coming to some of our hospitals thinking they’re going to get bad food,” Chef Tison noted. “But it takes time to change people’s perception because, again, the stigma of bad food in healthcare in a hospital is still there for what we’ve done for the past 50 years.” Among the areas that Chef Tison would like to continue to improve is how the food is delivered. “I’ve realized that there is no difference between the hospital patient and a hotel customer,” Chef Tison said. “The food you provide them needs to be done with the same attention, same style, the same refinement that you would do in a hotel.”
HOSPITALITY NEWS MAR/APR | Page 7
Photo Credit: Northwell Health
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