SNO in the News

HMC: Our Menu Innovations Keep Coming...

Did you know that HMC was founded in 1976 primarily to bring together the talents of our two founding dietitians, Victoria Major and Jane Harmer, to produce the first professional and comprehensive menu system for skilled nursing facilities? Imagine: before HMC menus, the cooks would handwrite a menu for a month for the dietitian to sign at their three hour monthly visit, sometimes after the menu had been served! There were no quantified or tested recipes and minimal diet instructions. For over three decades HMC has been a leader in developing custom software to produce fully documented menu systems with hundreds of clients in several states. I once calculated that over 25 million meals have been served in healthcare facilities using HMC recipes!

A few years ago HMC partnered with a leader in diet office/tray card software to bring the power of computers to the facility management of menu services ---

that has become Simplified Nutrition Online, or SNO, which exclusively features HMC menus and recipes. We set out to create a user-friendly, web-based menu solution that integrates the Resident's diet prescription, food preferences, and allergies with the facility menu to create a customized menu integrated tray ticket for each meal that lists the exact foods and portions to be served to the resident. This facilitates getting the right food to every resident at every meal. It pushes the decision making for what is allowed on a resident's diet to the dietitian level or the DSS, rather than cooks making decisions on the trayline as they serve --- especially problematic with combination diets and texture modifications. And, once the tray tickets are calculated in advance, a production sheet is printed that tells the staff exactly what to prepare and how many servings. Dramatic food cost savings can be secured just by following the production sheets.

Many other cutting edge tools are also included in this total dietary solution: a weight management module, charting functions, BEE and nutrition calculators. Several HMC clients are now using the SNO menu modules. Soon we will be ready to bring on more HMC clients. However, we need your support today with the voting of SNO into the number one position in the Long-Term Living magazine survey. This will be an amazing jump start to our marketing by pushing SNO, HMC menus and recipes to the forefront in electronic menu systems.