Citizens Memorial Hospital is a 74-bed acute care facility that has been rated as one of the top ten rural hospitals in the United States. Beginning in 1982, Citizens Memorial Hospital, located in Bolivar, Missouri, has developed into a fully integrated health care delivery system serving six counties with 88,000 lives. Today, it is currently the fastest growing hospital district in Southwest Missouri.
Since October of 1990, the Nutritional Services Department at CMH has been changing the look, taste, quality and most importantly, the expectation of what hospital foods should be. In 1990, under the direction of CMH Chief Executive Officer, Donald J. Babb, the Nutritional Services Department began to upgrade its food to restaurant grade quality. Along with that goal, came the challenge of finding a Cafeteria Point of Sale system, which would be compatible with the unique pricing structure found only in a Hospital environment.
While looking at several Restaurant Applications, CMH found that the available Point of Sale systems did not offer the flexibility of multiple pricing for its various clientele, such as Guests, Employees, Physicians, Volunteers, Students or Administrators, which is common in the Health Care Industry. Each of these customers usually have their own peculiar price structure or discount pricing, which cannot be programmed into common Restaurant POS systems.
Another problem with the standard POS systems was that no matter what "bells and whistles" came with the restaurant system, the number of pre-set programmable sale buttons designed into the keyboard limited all systems. Because of this, we could not accommodate our various customers and offer them the pricing we felt they deserved. That is, until CMH found the ICS Point of Sale system. With ICS, we have been able to turn a 100-button keyboard, into a 600-700-button keyboard, which meets our entire Customer pricing requirements.
Since purchasing the ICS POS, CMH has found a system, which is designed to meet all of our Customers' needs, while still providing a User Friendly environment that has paid for itself via the Employee Charging application.
Before the ICS system was in place, Bi-Weekly meal charges averaged between $1,500-$1,800. In the second week that it was installed we saw meal charges jump to $2,200. Over the months that followed, meal charges slowly crept to $3,000. In no time at all, the system began to pay for itself. Today, ten years later, the same Bi-Weekly charges now run around $6,400. Cafeteria revenue from employees and visitors has increased from $1,100 a week, to over $4,000 a week, with the average cost of an employee entree still only $1.25 per serving.
Our vision has always been to turn a Cost Center into a Revenue Center. With the ICS Point of Sale system, we have seen our annual Revenue increase from $125,000 per year, to over $365,000 per year. It is safe to say that we could not have reached those figures without the ICS system. For this reason alone, I would strongly recommend the ICS Point of Sale, as a means of continual growth and added source of revenue in an environment which is experiencing unprecedented cutbacks and financial constraints.
Sincerely,
Lawrence J. Bauman B.A., CDM, CFPP Director of Nutritional Services Citizens Memorial Hospital