Food Service Deal Raises Doubts Sacred Heart Concerned About Delivery Of Groceries From Seattle Warehouse

An exclusive new food service contract struck by Sacred Heart Medical Center and other health care providers has raised concerns about the timely delivery of groceries needed to serve 8,000 meals a day to the ill in Spokane County.

Sacred Heart and 1,800 other hospitals affiliated with the Premier Inc. national purchasing group recently struck a deal with Alliant Food Service Inc. to supply groceries to medical facilities across the country. The contract is valued at more than $1 billion.

But Alliant’s closest distribution warehouse to Spokane is in Seattle. That means groceries bound for Sacred Heart and other Inland Northwest members of Premier in the future might risk delay from winter storms and interstate traffic accidents.

“We’re dragging our feet on this deal,” said Elaine Reid, director of food and nutrition at Sacred Heart, which serves 3,000 meals daily. “We can’t wait a day for groceries. This concerns us.”

Reid said Sacred Heart likely will retain its current food service providers through 1997.

Ed Escalante, market president for Alliant’s Northwest operations in Seattle, said the company is working on a solution to Sacred Heart’s problem. The food service contract is so new that he said he has yet to meet with Premier members in Spokane to discuss their concerns.

“We’re in the preliminary phase of discussing who is going to do what, if anything,” Escalante said. “We’ll do our best to come up with a satisfactory solution.”

Both Premier and Alliant are based in Chicago. Premier is an association of 1,800 health care providers. Alliant was spun off from Kraft Foods as the nation’s second-largest food service company behind SYSCO.

Reid estimated that up to 8,000 meals are served daily by Premier affiliates in the Inland Northwest. Other Premier members include Group Health Northwest and Deaconess Medical Center.

Although the Premier-Alliant deal was struck in November, few Premier members in Spokane and North Idaho are getting their groceries from Alliant.

Sacred Heart currently buys food from as many as two dozen vendors, an arrangement that won’t change until it signs a final contract to switch exclusively to Alliant, Reid said.

Sacred Heart’s primary supplier currently is Food Services of America, which operates a huge North Spokane distribution warehouse that supplies hundreds of area restaurants, schools and hospitals.

“Alliant will have to take the business; we’re not going to give it to them,” said Gary Hayden, Spokane branch president of Food Services.

But the Alliant contract may be too strong for Sacred Heart and other Premier affiliates to ignore.

“There’s a plan brewing that may mandate that we make a switch to Alliant,” Reid said. “Ultimately, I believe we will have to do this.”

Food industry experts speculated that Alliant might attempt to establish a warehouse in Spokane by acquiring PSC Food Service, a Spokane vendor currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

PSC, which generates more than $4 million in annual sales, has a new distribution warehouse and food processing plant on the West Plains that could serve as a satellite center for Alliant.

But PSC president John Cooper said that is unlikely.

“There’s all kinds of rumors on the street,” he said. “We’re looking at our options and just going forward.”

, DataTimes