After a five-year hiatus, Anchorage's health department is planning to bring back a scoring system for inspections in restaurants and other food-service facilities.
The Anchorage Department of Health and Human Services this week unveiled a 54-item scorecard along with a method for assessing points. Over the next month, the department will be gathering public comment on the proposed system; it aims to begin posting scores along with inspection reports online in January.
Regular municipal health inspections date back to at least the mid-1980s, and those results are available online, Tony Barrett, environmental health program manager, said in an interview.
Until five years ago, those inspections included a scoring system. But the department discontinued scoring after the 2009 revision of the municipality's food code because the new code contained a higher number of possible violations, Barrett said. The number of items on the inspection sheet jumped from 44 to 54, adding violations related to sick restaurant workers and bare-hand contact with food.
Anchorage health officials then made the decision to hold off on the scoring portion of inspections until they were more accustomed to the new code requirements, Barrett said. In the meantime, inspectors have used a matrix, and their own judgment, to decide how many critical violations warrant a closure, he said.
As well as providing a clear measure for facilities and inspectors, Barrett said, the scoring system is intended to help the public understand online inspection reports.
"Part of the value of the scoring system is to have it more clear to the public and more clear to the operator, as well as the inspector: 'Do I need to take an action here or not?'" Barrett said.
The individual scores will add up to 100. A perfect score is a signal that inspectors found no code violations on the premises, according to a fact sheet distributed by the health department. Scores below 80 could mean a re-inspection is imminent, and facilities scoring 70 or below could be shut down until the violations are resolved.
The fact sheet says there are no plans to require the restaurants or food facilities to post copies of the scores in their businesses.
Information on the scoring system can be found under the "What's New" tab on the municipality's website. The public comment period opened Monday and will close Oct. 22. Written comments can be mailed to wwhhs@muni.org.
The health department will be holding a meeting Oct. 22 at 6 p.m. in the fourth-floor conference room at 825 L St. to discuss the proposal and hear public comment.
The reintroduction of the scoring system dovetails with a survey that will be conducted in the coming months to evaluate the municipality's food inspection process, Barrett said. The last time the survey was conducted was in 2003, and it led to changes in the inspection process.
Barrett said the goal of the upcoming survey will be to evaluate whether those changes led to improvements in food safety. Similar efforts are underway across the country as part of the Food and Drug Administration's voluntary retail standards, he added.