Programs at Baxter Regional Medical Center can help those facing malnutrition and food insecurity.
Hospital employees in 2018 launched the Ensure Program, which can provide cases of the Ensure dietary supplement to patients identified as lacking adequate nutrition. In 2020, Baxter Regional employees created the BRMC Food Pantry and began distributing food boxes to those patients facing hunger.
The BRMC Hospital Foundation provides the funds used to purchase the Ensure drinks. The Food Bank of North Central Arkansas provides the items used in the food boxes.
Leah Shelley, Baxter Regional’s nutrition manager and a registered dietician, describes both programs.
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The Ensure Program provides a case of the dietary supplement to Baxter Regional patients identified as lacking the proper nutrition. One case of Ensure is given to the patient when the are discharged, and the program also provides the patient with a voucher for a second case of the nutritional supplement.
To date the program has provided more than 500 cases of the supplement to BRMC patients.
BRMC employees partnered with the Food Bank to create the BRMC Food Pantry. That program allows hospital employees, paramedics and home health workers to identify patients facing food insecurity and to provide them with a bag of items containing meats, vegetables and other food items. The bags also contain resources the recipient can use to secure more longterm food assistance options.
The food boxes may be picked up at any of the Baxter Regional community houses — the Mruk Family Education Center on Aging, the Peitz Cancer Support House, the Reppell Diabetes Learning Center, Schliemann Center for Women’s Health Education. There are no qualifications or requirements for the boxes, but recipients are asked to fill out an identification form that is sent to the Food Bank for their records.
Jodi Bodenhamer, a registered nurse and the coordinator of the Reppell Center, says that when hospital employees began talking about creating a food box program they discovered many employees were already providing food items to patients out of their own pockets. Bodenhamer says it wasn’t unusual for paramedics or home health workers to purchase grocery items for patients if they learn that household was facing food insecurity issues.
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Diahanne VanGulick, coordinator for the Mruk Center, talks about working with the Food Bank and CEO Jeff Quick.
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VanGulick says hospital chaplain Randy Ludwig provides a valuable link between the Food Bank and the hospital, picking up items at the Food Bank and delivering them to the hospital to be packed into the food boxes.
Since launching the BRMC Food Pantry program in spring 2020, the project has handed out about 75 food boxes.
Future plans for the food box program include partnering up with Baxter Regional’s community clinics and having those employees screen their patients for possible food insecurities.
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