Frozen meals an improvement, says DHB boss
Frozen meals delivered under a new national health board contract will be more nutritious than those presently on offer, the region’s health boss says.
Board members approved a national food services contract at a full meeting of the board last Tuesday.
The agreement means Meals on Wheels customers will be served frozen meals transported from Auckland.
Meals served to patients at Wairau Hospital, in Blenheim, will be prepared using a ‘‘cook chill’’ model.
Compass Group, which already has the health board meals contract, is the national provider of hospital meals under the scheme.
Concerns had been raised about Meals on Wheels customers eating meals that had been reheated twice, as many clients of the service did not eat their meals immediately.
Nelson Marlborough District Health Board chief executive Chris Fleming said the risk would be minimised by Meals on Wheels customers having the choice to receive meals heated or frozen. At the moment, people who did not want to eat their meal at the time it was delivered would have to reheat the meal later on.
They did not have the option of receiving their meals frozen, Fleming said.
Meals would be delivered in microwavable plastic containers, rather than the foil containers that they were delivered in at present. The foil containers were also microwavable, but they had the potential to create confusion, Fleming said.
Hospital meals will continue to be produced from kitchens in both Nelson and Wairau Hospital, and the Murchison Health Centre, under the contract.
Compass Group has provided health board food services since 1999.
Fleming said while food services could always be improved, Compass had met all of its contractual requirements and sourced considerable amounts of its products for the meals from regional producers.
Health board dietitians raised concerns about the new contract during the consultation phase of the proposal, calling for higher levels of protein, calcium and fibre in the daily meals. But Fleming said the new system was an improvement on both the quality and nutritional standard of food services provided through the board.
Dietitians had acknowledged that the new meals were an improvement on the present system. Some of the issues they had raised had been addressed, while others would be discussed during the next phase of the process.
Members of the board and the executive team tried the frozen meals at last week’s board meeting. Hospital Services Support Group chairman Walter Scott and Nelson Marlborough District Health Board member Gerald Hope said they were impressed with the meals.