Back to main news page Louisiana Office of Public Health Serves Up Online Restaurant Ratings April 4, 2006 The Louisiana Office of Public Health today announced the launching of a new online restaurant inspection results website. Virtual Forum worked with the Sanitarian Services program within the Louisiana Office of Public Health to create the site that allows consumers to check recent inspection results of any restaurant in the state. “This is a big step in our effort to make information from our department more accessible to the public,” said DHH Secretary Dr. Fred Cerise. “This is something people have wanted for a long time, something our sanitarian staff has devoted much time to accomplishing and something we are very proud to be announcing. We hope this innovative step is the start of greater accessibility to public health information.” Users visting the OPH site at http://www.oph.dhh.louisiana.gov/, can search for restaurants by establishment name, address, parish or city. This makes it possible to look up the status of one particular restaurant or to search for all restaurants in a particular area to see which one rated the best. The online inspection reports are made possible through new reporting devices all DHH sanitarians began using last year. These new devices, handheld PC tablets, allow sanitarians to record and upload information electronically in a shorter time frame. Previously, sanitarians had many paper forms to fill out after completing an inspection. The new electronic forms contain lists of all possible sanitary code violations, which a sanitarian can check off during an inspection. Virtual Forum worked closely with the Sanitarians to integrate their handheld PC tablet data with the website.  For more information contact Dino Cappello at (973) 237-1166 x 201 or dino@virtualforum.com