The Challenge
A New Behavioral Health Unit — and No Way to Order Meals
When UCHealth opened an expanded inpatient behavioral health unit at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado in December 2025, it represented an important milestone — growing from an offsite campus model to a full inpatient unit, and expanding capacity from 33 to 55 beds.
But the expansion came with a design requirement that created an immediate operational problem for nutrition services: by clinical policy, there would be no bedside phones in patient rooms.
Across UCHealth's system, patients had always ordered meals by phone — calling a centralized call center. Without phones at the bedside, that model simply didn't work. And routing all orders through nurses calling the call center on patients' behalf would have flooded the system, increased wait times for other patients, and likely required adding a full-time call center employee to absorb the volume.
The Problem in Plain Terms
No Bedside Phones
Clinical policy for the behavioral health unit prohibited bedside phones — eliminating the standard meal ordering method entirely.
Call Center Couldn't Absorb It
Having nurses relay orders by phone would have overwhelmed the call center, increased hold times for other patients, and required new staffing.
55 Patients, 3 Meals a Day
With a freshly expanded unit, a manual workaround wasn't just inconvenient — it was operationally unsustainable from day one.
Jenna Sampson, Nutrition Systems Coordinator for UCHealth's North Region, needed to find a solution quickly — and she found it in a tool the system already had: the Patient App.
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