Overview
We spoke with Stefanie Burkett at East Valley recently about how Health-e Pro helps her manage her foodservice program in her district–from reports to carb-counting nurses to how her smoothly her Administrative Review went.
How did your Administrative Review go?
It went well! Our auditor wanted to see everything how I see it, so I got her a read-only license so she could get into Health-e Pro without me having to print everything. She logged in and was able to easily review everything.
She liked that Health-e Pro was easy to use. She described working in the software as using it in layers. You click to open the menu, then you click into the recipe, then into the ingredient, then into the spec sheet. It’s so easy, intuitive, and connected.
How did Health-e Pro help you prepare for review?
EZ Review was really good; I liked knowing what to look at and what to fix. Another thing I really liked about the service was it corrected a lot of errors I had made in the past. When you are new to a program and not totally sure what you are doing, you can make a lot of errors in the beginning, so the EZ Review service was able to catch those mistakes for me. That went super smoothly. It also taught me the mistakes to look out for.
I couldn’t actually imagine having a review without paying for that EZ Review service. I had quite a few errors. EZ Review was a key piece.
How does your nurse use Health-e Pro?
Products are always changing and my nurses need allergen information and carb counts. A lot of my recipes are combined; for example, beef dippers with rice. My nurse is able to login to Health-e Pro and say, for example, a kid only wants rice; she can find the carb count for the rice. She can also log in and see the spec sheet herself; I really like that because it takes a lot of pressure off of me.
How has Health-e Pro made your program more compliant?
It helps me make sure we are compliant. A lot of ladies in the kitchen use the Meal Group report, which shows how each menu item is credited. Now that they can look for themselves, that has streamlined our department. I was able to get all my kitchens a tablet so they can be in Health-e Pro in real time which makes compliance easier, too.
Another thing is our products change constantly, so just because I printed the production records two weeks ago using a specific brand of chicken nuggets, it changes. Instead of having to reprint reports constantly, with the kitchens having a tablet, they are always current.
Before Health-e Pro, any time a change was made, I would have to call all my kitchens and the nurse and let them know of any changes and send them over new recipe, but it gets to the point when I am resending constantly, so they don’t know which one is correct or out dated and neither do I after a while. With everyone now being able to login to Health-e Pro, it is so much easier to keep up with changes.
My staff love online production because they know what is going on. Before online production, menu changes were all over the place. Now if something changes in the menu, they check in Health-e Pro to see the changes, and that’s it. It is so easy! They can see what I am doing real-time!
What reports help you the most?
I personally love is the Shopping List–I use that all the time. I send it to each site because they order their own food. Each week, I send them the shopping list, they order from the list and then I combine all sites and put it into Health-e Pro.
Anything else to add?
Software is only as good as you make it. You have to invest. Any computer software is as good as the time you invest to learn it correctly. If you don’t change things or update it as it comes up, it’s not going to be any good for you.
We signed a multi-year contract with Health-e Pro right before free state-wide software was announced. I was worried how I was going to justify the cost, but when the reviewer was here, I asked what she thought, and said that just because something doesn’t cost any money doesn’t mean it is free. I’ve put the investment of my time into Health-e Pro and it is working well for us–I’ve already gotten my investment back with it. I passed my audit with Health-e Pro, so clearly it is working.
