By Kaye Spector
Plain Dealer Health and Medical Writer
The new online access to Cleveland food inspection reports may be dandy, but in other cities, diners only have to look at a restaurant's front window to find out how it fared with the local health department.Such a system -- in which every restaurant or food vendor prominently displays a sign that announces how well the establishment complies with food safety codes -- might be in store for Greater Cleveland diners, too.
The Cuyahoga County health department this week began what's expected to be a yearlong discussion on creating and implementing a restaurant grading system, said County Health Commissioner Terry Allan.
Restaurant food safety grabbed the spotlight last month after the Cleveland Health Department put its food inspection reports -- which always have been available to the public in paper form -- online.
Cleveland health officials made the reports more accessible to educate consumers about where they are buying prepared food; and to increase vendors' motivation to comply with food safety laws.
The database was so popular at first that users briefly crashed the system. Views now have slowed to about 100 a day, Cleveland Health Director Matt Carroll said.
Carroll said that his department, too, is interested in a restaurant grading system, but is far from any serious discussion.
Online reports are certainly a step up in user-friendliness from paper inspection reports, but grade cards reach more consumers and are more readily available. The cards make a restaurant's degree of hygiene immediate visible to all -- especially those deciding where to eat on the fly.
"Our ultimate goal is to reduce the potential for food-borne disease," the county's Allan said. "We just haven't decided the approach."
Such a system can work, says a often-cited independent study of a decade-old restaurant grading program in Los Angeles County, Calif.
Introduction of the grade cards there corresponded to a 20 percent decrease in food-illness-related hospitalizations, while restaurateurs were more motivated to improve hygiene quality, says the study, published in 2005 in the journal of the American Agricultural Economics Association.
Eateries may actually benefit from the grade cards, the study said: revenue went up 5.7 percent for restaurants with an A grade and by 0.7 percent for restaurants with Bs. Restaurants with Cs saw revenue decrease by 1 percent.
The study hypothesized that the grade system magnified economic incentives for restaurateurs to maintain good-quality hygiene, while consumers became more confident about trying new restaurants and were less captive to those where they'd had good experiences.
Whatever shape the Cuyahoga County system ultimately takes, it likely will be years in the making, Allan said.
It took the Columbus Department of Health nearly three years to launch its colored-coded restaurant grading system in 2006.
The initiative began with the board of health, whose members wanted a system similar to what they'd seen in other cities, said Health Commissioner Teresa Long.
Nearly a year was spent studying those programs in places such as Los Angeles, Sacramento, Calif., and Toronto. The rest of the time was spent making the case to the public and restaurateurs.
The public, for the most part, strongly supported the initiative, Long said. Many who spoke in favor were from communities that had similar programs.
But the restaurant owners were a different matter.
"Of course our initial reaction was, 'No way do we want this,' " said Gail Baker, executive director of the Central Ohio Restaurant Association.
Restaurateurs worried they would be stuck with a designation that only reflected a one-day snapshot based on a single inspection, rather than a long-term look, Baker said.
The health board's advisory group, which had members in the restaurant business, demanded -- and were given -- a major role in developing the program's procedures.
The advisory group proposed professional-looking, unobtrusive durable plastic signs that could be updated with the most recent inspection date.
The group also won its request that only supervisors -- not inspectors --make the decision to place a yellow sign, which means the restaurant has not made progress in correcting its health violations.
Having the supervisor place the yellow sign averts friction that can spring up between operator and inspector and helps the operator feel the decision is getting as fair a review as possible.
"Having looked at all sorts of programs around the country, I feel ours is the best in the country," Baker said. "I have a lot of confidence in it. Our members accepted it very well."
Baker said restaurant owners also are happy that they have two weeks to fix any problems the inspectors find -- while keeping their green sticker, the highest-quality designation.
"At first they hoped it would go away," Long said of the restaurant owners. "But once they understood that there could be an opportunity to shape it, at some point they jumped on and said, 'We want the state-of-the-art model.' That was a big turning point."
After two public meetings, the Columbus health board approved changes to city health code to create the program. Then health officials held 14 educational forums to teach local businesses about it.
"We weren't asking for anything that good operators weren't already doing," Baker said. "So it pretty much was an easy sell and the right thing to do."
Matty Lucarelli, executive director of the Cleveland Area Restaurant Association, said that a grading system would be welcome here.
"We're very happy, obviously, when anything like that occurs in the food service world," she said. "It's a very good thing, and hospitals, as well as restaurants, are more than happy to comply."
Many restaurateurs in New York City, however, are less enthusiastic about that town's grading system, which will go live in July.
The restaurant operators' trade group opposes the grade cards, calling it a gimmick and a poor regulatory tool.
Chief among their criticism is that inspectors will issue letter grades on the spot after inspections. Also earning their disapproval is that it will take at least three weeks to challenge the findings.
But in Los Angeles County, 91 percent of the population like the grading system, says a study by the county's health department.
"This is something that over this year we are going to look at and weigh our best options," Allan said. "We want to understand where the successes are."
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