Meet Marianne
Marianne Katusin is the Manager of Food Services at the Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital. She has worked in the healthcare food service for 30 years and brings drive, innovative thinking, and commitment to providing exemplary patient meal experiences. Marianne was the project lead for Halton Healthcare’s award winning “Good for you…Locally Grown” project, recognized by the Greenbelt Fund for putting more Ontario grown and produced foods on hospital menus. Marianne holds a BAA in Administration & Information Management, a Diploma in Food & Nutrition Management, her Lean Healthcare Yellow and Green Belts, and is an active member of the Canadian Society of Nutrition Management. Marianne works with HealthcareCAN as an instructor for the Food Systems Management course.
Halton Healthcare
Halton Healthcare is comprised of three community hospitals: Georgetown Hospital, Milton District Hospital and Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital. These hospitals care for more than 325,000 residents and serve more than half a million patient meals a year with a commitment to providing ‘exemplary patient experiences, always’. Championing the procurement and use of fresh, locally grown foods, the team has led change across Ontario’s food services industry by partnering with a network of Ontario food manufacturers and producers. This partnership has been instrumental in developing new nutritious food options for hospital menus, and in providing patients with personalized meal delivery options, including the award winning ‘Call to Order Room Service’ Program and Dining room service.
Nourish Vision
Halton Healthcare continues to be leaders in providing innovative meal delivery services to our patients in the communities we serve. Maintaining and growing the local and regional food systems requires a collaborative approach that includes working with various partners. Promoting local foods has become part of our day-to-day work. We are beginning phase two of our “Good for you…Locally Grown” project. Our focus in this phase is:
Skills Development – Working with our partners, we will continue to bring more production in house with recipe development using local foods. This includes valuable training and development opportunities for our front line staff with industry experts on recipe development and testing.
Value Chain Collaboration – We will seek new and innovative ways to bring farmers and manufacturers to our facilities. We will look for opportunities for farmers and the value chain to work together to develop processed food items, fresh fruits & vegetables that meet the required nutritional criteria so they can be easily added to healthcare menus.
Innovation & Product Development – We will begin to collaborate with farmers, manufacturers and other industry colleagues on developing strategies to increase the amount of local food available to food service operators. We will enhance our current menu offerings to include more centre of the plate proteins, casseroles and soups using local Ontario ingredients. Our goal is to develop sustainable food production, using local food ingredients and brand those items on our patient menus.
NOURISH UPDATES
