Using a menu planning program can make diet extension management much easier in the residential care or nursing home environment.
Trying to keep track of which resident has which dietary restriction can be a challenge if you’re stuck with paper spreadsheets or outdated software. Ensuring that every tray of food complies with the patient’s doctor’s orders can strain staff resources, leading to increased costs and potential errors.
A food menu program can greatly simplify the process of providing nutritious, dietitian-approved meals to the residents of your adult care facility. Everyone can have healthy foods that meet their dietary guidelines or restrictions – and none that don’t – at every meal.
How to Manage Diet Extensions with a Menu Planning Program
Start by choosing a menu planning program that includes an extensive database of dietitian-approved recipes. Scaling the meals to add or subtract servings is simple, and the nutrition facts for every recipe are automatically updated when adjustments are made.
The recipes can be sorted by ingredient, allowing your dietary staff to plan menus based on the foods that meet your residents’ dietary restrictions. You can also search for recipes by specific diet extensions. And, if you’d like to modify a particular recipe to meet a certain dietary requirement, instructions are included.
Use Tray Cards to Ensure Diet Extension Accuracy
The diet extensions of each of your adult care facility residents can be integrated into food menu program software, which allows the kitchen staff to easily print out detailed tray cards.
Tray cards identify the menu items that are supposed to be included on each tray, along with reminders of foods that aren’t in line with the resident’s dietary restrictions. To know whether to leave the sugar off the tray, serve the cereal without milk or cut the food into bite-sized pieces, for example, all a food service staff member has to do is glance down at the tray card. This ensures that every tray meets its intended resident’s needs.
Additional Benefits of Adopting a Menu Planning Program
A food menu program can save your dietary and kitchen staff both costs and time.
Along with managing diet extensions, menu planning software also streamlines adult care facility food purchasing. Order lists are automatically generated, based upon your menu choices. And, you’ll know your food costs ahead of time, as the program uses your price lists to calculate the total for every recipe in the database.
Meal preparation is also much easier with a food menu program. Automated pick and pull sheets tell kitchen staff which foods need to be pulled from the freezer and prepped for upcoming meals. Everything is listed on a calendar spreadsheet, including the necessary quantities and exactly how the foods need to be prepared.
If you would like to see exactly how a food menu program can benefit your facility, schedule a complimentary, hassle-free demonstration of the comprehensive Grove Menus meal planning system.
Our cost-effective suite of user-friendly food menu program tools, including hundreds of dietitian-approved recipes, can save your facility time and money. To see how our menu planning program handles managing diet extensions, food purchasing and meal preparation and planning, contact us today.