South African foodservice quality: inpatient’s perceptions

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess patient perceptions regarding South African hospital foodservice quality. Design/methodology/approach In total, 419 questionnaires were administered to surgical and medical inpatients consuming a normal diet in six South African provinces. A number of 23 urban and 10 rural hospitals were sampled. Inpatients were surveyed for their opinions on hospital foodservice quality with a view to improving meals and food delivery processes. Findings Results revealed lower patient satisfaction with aspects relating to foodservice reliability. Among other issues, inpatients were not informed about meal times (overall median=0), had to wait longer than expected for their meals and were not informed about delays (overall median=2). Menu items were not explained to inpatients (overall median=0), and inpatients were not informed about nutritional values (overall median=0). Consequently, patients opined that they were not willing to use the hospital foodservice in future (overall median=2). Originality/value To identify South African healthcare issues that need improvement, it is necessary to establish where to act. These findings create awareness among authorities and hospital managers to consider patient perceptions when they review and try to improve public hospital foodservice quality, which could also assist in ensuring improvement in food consumption levels, thereby combating South African hospital malnutrition.

Customer Value Co-creation Behavior in Times of COVID-19: The Case of the Mexican Food Service Delivery Ecosystem

“…The food delivery services ecosystem faces more marketing and management challenges than the rest of the delivery services, which focus on the enhanced service by speed and efficiency with which customers receive their orders. However, this service efficiency, from the sd-logic perspective, is the result of joint participation between the business and the customer, being the customer who determines it phenomenologically, which means it will depend on each customer, as their characteristics, skills, resources, and environment, in general, determine their acceptable role as value co-creator, in addition to the fact that for each customer the value will be different from their perspective, experience, and context (Ncube & Nesamvuni, 2019).…”