NHS hospitals deliberately hiding patient dissatisfaction with food
The Campaign for Better Hospital Food [1] today unveils figures showing that NHS hospitals routinely award themselves a high - and often flawless - rating for the quality of their patient meals despite an independent Care Quality Commission survey showing half of patients are dissatisfied with hospital food. The discovery has led to renewed calls for the government to introduce mandatory hospital food standards similar to those that already exist for prison food [2].
Annual assessments of the quality of hospital food carried out by hospital staff show that 99% of patient meals are rated as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’, with only 2 out of 156 NHS Hospital Trusts in England reporting that their food did not meet this standard [3]. The results of these assessments stand in stark contrast to a reliable Care Quality Commission survey of patients which found that only around half (55%) of respondents said that the food they were served was ‘good’ [4].
Ninety seven organisations [5] supporting the Campaign for Better Hospital Food, including the Royal College of Physicians, British Heart Foundation and the Patients Association, are calling on the government to support the Health and Social Care (Amendment) (Food Standards) Bill [6] which has been introduced to Parliament by Baroness Cumberlege [7], and would improve all patient meals by requiring them to meet mandatory standards, including quality, nutritional and environmental standards.
Alex Jackson, Co-ordinator of the Campaign for Better Hospital Food, said: “It is time for the Government to come clean about the sorry state of hospital food in England and set mandatory standards for patient meals.
This would only involve extending an existing policy which has seen it set mandatory standards for prison food and food served in government departments, to go alongside those that already exist for school food. Surely patients recovering in hospital have the same right to good food as government Ministers, school kids and prisoners?”
ENDS
Download the data in PDF or Excel format
For more information and interviews, please contact:
Alex Jackson on Tel: 0203 5596 777 or Mob: 07734 902909, or by email at alex@sustainweb.org.
Notes to editor
[1] Campaign for Better Hospital Food is calling for mandatory hospital food standards, see www.hospitalfood.org.uk.
[2] The Campaign for Better Hospital Food criticises the Government for failing to set mandatory standards for patient meals, and allowing hospital assessments to create a false impression that patients are satisfied with the quality of food served to them on the ward. Food served in most public sector organisations in England already has to meet mandatory standards. School food has to meet mandatory nutritional standards and food served in ‘central government, including government departments and prisons, has to meet mandatory Government Buying Standards (for more details, see http://sd.defra.gov.uk/advice/public/buying/).
[3] NHS hospitals in England carry out Patient Environment Action Team (PEAT) assessments each year. They are intended to assess the quality of care provided to inpatients including the quality of food, and whether patients are being afforded privacy and dignity. The assessment teams are comprised of NHS staff, including nurses, matrons, doctors, catering and domestic service managers, executive directors, dieticians and estates directors. The results of the assessments are published on the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) website.
HSCIC also publishes Hospital Estates and Facilities Statistics which show how much hospitals are paying to feed patients and how much hospital food is wasted. The average cost of feeding a patient is £8.60 per day and approximately 7% of hospital meals are wasted even before they reach the patient. For full data please visit this website.
According to the data published by Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) and the Care Quality Commission, fourteen of the twenty hospitals serving the best patient meals employ NHS catering staff to prepare and cook food from scratch. At twelve of the twenty hospitals serving the worst food, meals are made by a private catering company. More than half (59%) of patient food made by private caterers is delivered to the hospital as a pre-prepared ready-meal and re-heated before being served to patients.
[4] Between September 2012 and January 2013 the Care Quality Commission (CQC) carried out an inpatient survey to investigate the experiences of more than 64,500 people who were admitted to an NHS hospital in that period. This included whether they considered the food they were served to be ‘good’. The full results of this survey are available here.
Please find data from the PEAT forms and Care Quality Commission survey in the Excel spreadsheet which I have sent to you by email, along with this press release.
[5] A list of organisations supporting the Campaign for Better Hospital Food is available at https://www.sustainweb.org/hospitalfood/organisations/.
[6] To read the Bill Health and Social Care (Amendment) (Food Standards) Bill please visit http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/healthandsocialcareamendmentfoodstandards.html.
[7] Baroness Cumberlege was created a life peer in 1990 and was appointed as a Health Minister from 1992 to 1997. She is a Trustee at Cancer Research UK, Vice President of the Royal Society for Public Health and Honorary Fellow at the Royal College of Physicians. For Baroness Cumberlege’s Parliamentary biography please visit http://www.parliament.uk/biographies/lords/member/2729.
Published Tuesday 27 August 2013
Better Hospital Food: The campaign represents a coalition of organisations calling on the Westminster government to introduce mandatory nutritional, environmental and ethical standards for food served to patients in NHS hospitals in England.
