An uplifting NHS story

[trousers]

I've been watching 'Operation Hospital Food' this week and thought it worth sharing here. (It's been on morning TV so probably gone under a lot of people's radars).

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b014hmnt

 

I'm often at the front of the queue when it comes to criticising the inertia in large organisations to embrace change, but this 5 episode series has restored some faith in the NHS's ability to shake off years of dogma, in this case in the much neglected area of hospital food provision.

 

Mrs Trousers and her sister both work in the NHS so I have a small insight into how bureaucratic and wasteful hospital catering is and this programme shows what has happened at Scarborough Hospital to provide better quality food whilst keeping within the existing budget. Indeed, it looks like they'll start to make a profit through the onsite cafe/restaurant which they'll then plough back into the department to improve the quality even more.

 

Ok, I accept that these fly-on-the-wall documentaries can often be somewhat contrived but, with this one, I felt a sense of genuineness when watching it.

 

Anyway, it's not often I feel uplifted by what I see and hear about NHS management so thought I'd break the mould with this one! Normal Daily Mail grumpiness will be resumed in due course.... ;-)

[trousers]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/health/health/3786965/Could-sticky-toffee-pudding-rescue-the-NHS.html

 

TELLY chef James Martin wants to do for hospital grub what Jamie Oliver did for school dinners.

 

But his battle to improve NHS meals has not been an easy one. The Saturday Kitchen Live star was left in tears after trying to transform food at Scarborough Hospital for a new BBC1 show.

 

He was stunned to learn more money is spent on prison grub than food for the sick.

 

Here he tells The Sun how his quest was sparked by seeing his late gran struggling to eat hospital food.

 

HOSPITAL patients deserve some decent grub.

 

It's important they eat good, healthy food. But after spending five months learning how the hospital meals system works, I was shocked.

 

I had a personal reason to want to improve food for patients. I watched the woman who taught me to cook, my grandmother, suffer in hospital like I've never seen anyone suffer before.

 

She spent four months in York Hospital before passing away there 12 years ago. I think I owe it to her to do something.

It's been proven that people die every year of malnutrition in UK hospitals. Why the hell is that?

 

A nice bowl of warm soup will make you feel better, but if you give patients a bowl of what looks like dishwater, it's appalling.

 

That's why I said yes when the BBC approached me a year ago about filming a series focused on improving hospital meals.

Four hospitals refused to even have us through the door because they were worried about negative press. But Scarborough Hospital agreed to the idea.

 

Fundamentally food should be looked at as a medicine. When I walked through the hospital door it wasn't. There were loads of foods in packets including potatoes, rice, desserts and vegetables.

 

Then you have to work in the cost - more is spent on prison food than on hospital food. The NHS has £3.49 per patient per day to cover breakfast, lunch, dinner and all drinks and snacks.

 

What shocked me was the lack of communication. Because of NHS guidelines kitchen staff had not been allowed into the wards to see the patients in 27 years. And the staff had no idea what happened to the food when it was wheeled out on trollies.

 

It was kept in a hot cabinet for 90 minutes then super-heated and served to patients and 40-50 per cent of it was then put in the swill bin.

 

There were also big issues around the menus. They wanted a menu revolving around 21 days. My argument is we're not living in the 1960s when people used to spend three weeks in hospital.

 

In 2011 most people are in hospital for two days max. In my view it's better to give them good quality food, daily.

Their existing menu cycle had three starters, main courses and desserts for each meal - that was more than 150 dishes they had to make. But because they had been doing that for several years it was the norm.

 

However, the price of everything has gone up, so to compensate, everything was out of packets or frozen.

 

By reducing the choice of a three-week menu cycle down to one week, you can order in bulk and buy local produce which helps to stop local suppliers going out of business.

 

Then you can afford to serve fresh fruit and veg, which is beneficial to patients.

 

To compensate for spending more money you have to make the hospital work as a business.

 

The restaurant at London's Royal Brompton hospital makes £1.5million a year, which gets put back into the catering budget to spend on better food for the patients. Everybody should be doing that.

 

I knew I was never going to change things overnight but it's far better to change one hospital and then change another, and maybe the ripple will expand.

 

At Scarborough it's like everyone has been covered in a flour bomb of angel dust.

Patients love their new food - they have eaten more and as a result have felt better.

[Toomer]

I had two stays in SGH about four years ago, the treatment I received was second to none but the food was not the best.

[Verbal]

Mrs trousers. I bet you'll get bashed for calling her that - twice, if it's the trouser-in-law as well.

[bridge too far]

Not having been around for a few days, I haven't managed to see the programme. But I do know, from working in 3 very large acute hospitals, that most catering is now outsourced to private companies (often as part of a PFI deal) to companies such as Sodhexo.

 

When I first started working for the NHS in 1991, our hospital had a great restaurant. But it was forced to adopt an outside caterer (it was called 'market testing') in about 1994 and the food went downhill very fast.

[hamster]

Steam-plicity. The begining of the end.Nice profit margins grit the share holders when IT SHOULD be for the public purse.Having said that, the NHS did save Mrs h and my lives in the past two years, when I was in at least half the others in the ward had relatives bring food in, some albeit from Burger King, which says a lot about the alternatives

[tony13579]

It is amazing that they use expensive medicines, expensive equiptment & expensive disposable everything during your stay and then restrict the food budget to 88p a meal. And then have beds blocked by mal-nourished dehydrated OAP'S!

 

I remember the days where you were nagged if you hadn't finished your jug of water!

 

My last stay on hospital I didn't get any food in 3 days. 2 days waiting for my op and a dozy team that left nil by mouth sign up. My first meal arrived just as I was leaving!

 

But food is the foundation of health! How can the budget for food be less than 1 hours charge for parking! Or the coat of the days disposable gloves?

[trousers]

Not having been around for a few days, I haven't managed to see the programme. But I do know, from working in 3 very large acute hospitals, that most catering is now outsourced to private companies (often as part of a PFI deal) to companies such as Sodhexo.

 

When I first started working for the NHS in 1991, our hospital had a great restaurant. But it was forced to adopt an outside caterer (it was called 'market testing') in about 1994 and the food went downhill very fast.

 

Why didn't the hospital's executive management monitor and review the standards of the external company? Surely they didn't leave them to their own devices unchecked by the people that engaged them?

[trousers]

It is amazing that they use expensive medicines, expensive equiptment & expensive disposable everything during your stay and then restrict the food budget to 88p a meal. And then have beds blocked by mal-nourished dehydrated OAP'S!

 

I remember the days where you were nagged if you hadn't finished your jug of water!

 

My last stay on hospital I didn't get any food in 3 days. 2 days waiting for my op and a dozy team that left nil by mouth sign up. My first meal arrived just as I was leaving!

 

But food is the foundation of health! How can the budget for food be less than 1 hours charge for parking! Or the coat of the days disposable gloves?

 

Yes, the food budget should be higher in principle, but the programme proved that you can produce a quality product WITHIN this tight budget by (a) cutting out all the waste and bureaucracy and (b) increasing the profitability of the commercial side (the staff and visitor restaurant) and plough that back into the budget.

[hamster]

I have a lot of friends in SGH catering and over the last couple of years morale has nosedived. Compass, the new people running it and who they were all TUPE'd over to, make money on what goes in the bins. An absolutely ridiculous situation, they should be penalised for it.Was that in the multi million £ contract winning business plan?

[bridge too far]

Why didn't the hospital's executive management monitor and review the standards of the external company? Surely they didn't leave them to their own devices unchecked by the people that engaged them?

 

With regard to the hospital that had its catering outsourced in 1994, there was no real monitoring set up (it was the start of outsourcing and I guess the powers that be at the time hadn't thought about monitoring )

 

When PFI contracts were let, a major part of the contracts were 'soft' FM - cleaning, catering, maintenance, portering. Those contracts were supposed to be monitored, but hospitals have always been reluctant to appoint back room staff (I know, I know but I'm not kidding). So standards were not really effectively monitored. Also, the very people who had the knowledge and experience to do monitoring were no longer around because they'd been surplus to requirements..

 

And, in the very early 90s, a lot of money had been spent on 'cook-chill' (the scheme originated in the old Wessex region IIRC). Basically, food was produced off-site and shipped to participating hospitals. This meant the in-house catering equipment was redundant (as were a lot of the cooks) and, I would suggest, led to the tasteless, plastic food being dished up. A bit like school kitchens, once the kit has gone it's very expensive to replace it.

 

QA at Portsmouth used to have good catering and a very sound Catering Manager. But that all went as part of the PFI deal.