Hospitals tying up with hotels in Visakhapatnam for patient catering

A new trend has emerged in wake of the Covid19pandemic with private hospitals in the beach city now tying up with hotels to prepare meals for patients. Hospital management said they were eyeing to rope in housekeeping services and contacting hotel management institutes to recruit front and back-office executives. “While the city has good medical facilities and is all set to come up with a full-fledged health city, its city still lacks skilled manpower in the hospital sector. The time has come to hire from or collaborate with experts from each and every sector,” Omni Hospitals CEO, Dr. Sukumar Chitturi told TOI. Hospital and hotel executives said the idea of collaborating with restaurants of reputed hotels was first conceived during the lockdown. Up until then, hospitals were running their own kitchen units through outsourced catering services or procuring meals directly from caterers. However, following the announcement of the lockdown, several catering services failed to provide services to hospitals. As a result, managements started procuring meals from hotels whose kitchens were catering to quarantined travelers coming to Andhra Pradesh from high-risk states and abroad.