The Arkansas Health Department earlier this month began posting restaurant inspection reports on its website, making reports on about 15,000 retail food establishments throughout the state publicly available.
The site, which can be accessed through Healthy.Arkansas.gov, is easy to use and the reports on restaurants and other food-serving businesses readily accessible and searchable. That was the point, said Richard McMullen, associate director of science for the department’s Center for Local Public Health.
“We think it’s a very good thing as far as availability and transparency for the customers that are using these restaurants,” he said. “We wanted to modernize or go from a paper format for our inspections to a digital format, and in doing so that would allow a much more easily accessible report, and so that’s why we did what we did.”
The agency receives “quite a few” requests for the inspection reports, McMullen said, and the digitization eases the burden on the Health Department. Previously, individual counties kept the paper reports, and the agency had to request the reports from them. “And now, people can access that without even going through us.”
The Health Department visits each of the 15,000 establishments — which range from restaurants to bars to day care centers to schools to concession stands and more — at least once a year.
The department consulted with the Arkansas Hospitality Association in setting up the new system.
Feedback so far has been positive, McMullen said. “Consumers can be very well-informed before they even step foot into a place,” laughingly adding, “It’s still not going to tell you if the food’s any good.”
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