Food delays unfair to patients

Poor-quality hospital food has long been a ubiquitous cultural punchline, played for laughs in TV shows, movies and popular reading material.

While that’s unfair to the many health-care facilities that do try to provide patients with nutritious, enjoyable meals, there’s also no question that cooking for hundreds of patients (who, obviously, are not in the best of health can be challenging), even at the best of times.

Islanders who are referred to the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax may be familiar with another challenge at the hospital cafeteria.

First, we commend the Nova Scotia Health Authority’s desire to improve meals for patients at the QEII Health Sciences Centre in Halifax.

The goals of the QEII new food services system — to give patients more control over what they eat, provide meals faster and fresher, and also cut food waste — are equally as welcome.

Unfortunately, the execution of the new meals plan has been decidedly less than satisfactory.

Since the rollout one week ago, complaints from patients and their families have been mounting about late and missed meals.

A woman whose husband was in the Halifax Infirmary for care related to a worsening chronic condition told the SaltWire Network’s Nebal Snan that one day last week he received only breakfast and an 8 p.m. supper, then the next day only supper.

When she complained to someone from food services about dinner arriving at 8 p.m., she was apparently told other patients had had to wait until 10 p.m., the inference being others had had it worse.

That’s cold comfort.

“It’s been very frustrating,” she told Snan. “There are patients who have gone two days with no meals or sporadic meals, and these are people who are sick and are trying to recover.”

Even though we understand health care is under pressure now due to the pandemic — missing meals for patients is unacceptable.

The health-care system has a legal duty of care to ensure patients are not treated in a way that could cause them harm. Sick patients shouldn’t be missing, or inordinately waiting for, meals.

The new food services system uses smaller kitchens on every floor instead of a central kitchen, according to an NSHA spokeswoman. High demand from patients all ordering meals around the same time overwhelmed those kitchens and caused delays, she said.

No doubt, that’s what happened. But since the number of patients per floor should have been known beforehand, and as meal times are predictable, one might have expected that demand to have been anticipated.

Every new system has glitches and takes time to run smoothly. The public hopes that will soon prove the case at the QEII.

Meanwhile, any lessons learned should be applied to future rollouts of this new food services system at other hospitals in the region.