Foodie culture—or the reason your social media feeds are flooded with pictures of over-the-top entrées—hasn’t just hit restaurants, blogs, and college campuses; it’s also arrived in hospitals. From made-to-order pasta stations to elevated menu offerings, health systems are rethinking the traditional cafeteria model.

Among those leading the charge to redefine hospital dining is Lisa Shoopman, Baptist Health System’s associate VP for food and nutrition services.

For more than two decades, she’s helped hospitals transform how they feed patients, staff, and visitors—doing everything from updating menu options and cafeteria fixtures to improving the systems used to order, track, and serve patient meals.

Shoopman—a registered and licensed dietitian nutritionist who got her start working in a hospital kitchen—said she’s always been passionate about food service and improving processes for patients and staff alike.

Keep reading here.—SY

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Shannon at [email protected]. For confidential conversations, ask Shannon for her number on Signal.

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The healthcare industry has tried for years—but to little avail—to figure out how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to make work easier and improve patient care.

Despite the middling success healthcare has had with AI, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the largest venture capital firm in the US, has bet big on healthcare AI startups in the past year. The firm has invested in at least four startups and co-led three funding rounds totaling $328 million.

Investment partner Daisy Wolf and general partner Vijay Pande at a16z wrote in an August blog post that the VC firm is aware that “the AI hype cycle has hit healthcare before.” But, the two partners wrote, “we’re excited by today’s overlap of data availability, public foundation models, and widespread interest.”

Keep reading here.—MA

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Maia at [email protected]. For confidential conversations, ask Maia for her number on Signal.

Louisiana’s largest not-for-profit health system began piloting a new generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool in September to help providers more efficiently respond to patient questions.

About 100 clinicians across Ochsner Health’s 46 hospitals and 370 centers have started using technology from Microsoft that integrates electronic health record (EHR) data to draft and send “simple messages” to patients.

“[The AI] will reduce [the] time our clinicians are spending on computers so that they can spend more time doing what they do best—direct patient care,” Ochsner’s Chief Application Officer Amy Trainor said in a statement.

Keep reading here.—KW

Do you work in healthcare or have information about the industry that we should know? Email Kristine at [email protected]. For confidential conversations, ask Kristine for her number on Signal.

Today’s top healthcare reads.

Stat: Here’s a figure to remember: 53.7 mg/dL. That’s the average “good” cholesterol level from a new study, which found that having either higher or lower levels of HDL cholesterol may increase dementia risk in older adults. (NBC)

Quote: "Everyone now, because the world is on fire, everybody’s sort of looking at each other saying, OK, now we really do have to do something.”—Noe Woods, an ob-gyn at Magee Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, on reducing healthcare’s carbon footprint (NPR)

Read: The American College of Emergency Physicians is set to vote on whether “excited delirium” is an acceptable diagnosis police can use to explain why some people die in police custody. (KFF Health News)