HOSPITAL MEAL OR PRISON FOOD: CAN YOU GUESS WHICH IS WHICH?
HOW MUCH DOES YOUR LOCAL HOSPITAL SPEND ON FOOD?
SOME patients in Irish hospitals are being fed meals that on average cost less per plate than what is served to prisoners in Irish jails.
An investigation by this newspaper today reveals for the first time a breakdown of catering costs per meal in the majority of Irish hospitals.
The figures obtained by the Irish Mail on Sunday through Freedom of Information legislation show that Portlaoise Hospital and Portlaoise Prison are on average spending the same amount of money per meal.
In 2015, Portlaoise Hospital spent on average 94c per meal for patients. Meanwhile, over the past four years Irish prisons, including neighbouring Portlaoise Prison – home to the likes of killer Graham Dwyer – on average spent €1 per meal.
The spend – based on the figures supplied to this newspaper by 38 out of 49 Irish hospitals – sees an average €2.88 spent per meal for patients, the MoS can reveal.
And significant questions have been raised by expert dietitians about the way the majority of hospitals prepare their meals using the ‘cookchill’ food preparation system.
According to the supplied figures, Mullingar hospital spends the lowest sum on food, less than €470,000 on 504,000 meals, a unit cost of 93c.
Along with Portlaoise and Mullingar hospitals, six facilities have a per plate price of less than €2. They are Cork’s Mercy University Hospital; the Adelaide & Meath Hospital in Tallaght, Naas General Hospital, Cork University Hospital, and Our Lady’s Hospital in Navan.
Another 13 hospitals operate on a per-meal price that is less than the average €2.88 cost.
Meanwhile, hospitals such as UH Galway, Mayo General, Crumlin and Dublin’s Eye and Ear Hospital all spend over €7 per meal – with the Eye and Ear hospital topping the list at an average cost of €7.37 per sitting.
The Ireland East Hospital Group – the largest of the hospital groups – said the costs supplied were based on varying factors, including meals for staff members and day patients attending hospital for tests.
Stephen McMahon, spokesman for the Patient’s Association of Ireland, told the MoS he was ‘outraged’ that the average patient meal cost less than a cup of coffee.
‘It’s an outrage to see that an average meal is costing €2.88 to produce – a cup of Starbucks coffee is more than that. We have almost one in four patients entering hospitals in a malnourished state so if this is the value being put on hospital meals, the Minister for Health needs to take drastic action.’
He said the fact that some hospitals were spending less than €1 per meal was ‘frightening’.
‘In terms of a unit price, you wouldn’t buy a decent can of dog food for 93c or 94c,’ he said.
Mr McMahon urged the Department of Health and the HSE to invest in getting meals to a point where there are no complaints about hospital food.
‘Nutrition is so vital to the care of patients and is as important as medicine so we need to get it right,’ he said. ‘We know that the shocking statistics show that many patients are malnourished so they need wholesome freshly cooked foods.’
A large proportion of hospitals in Ireland use the cook-chill system, where fresh foods are cooked, blast chilled and then reheated from a low temperature before service.
The Irish Prison Service operates differently, with a ‘cook-fresh’ system. This means that each meal is prepared fresh in the morning or afternoon, depending on what meal is served.
The result is that the prisoners are receiving food that is fresh and has not lost any of its nutrients through reheating.
Many of the country’s children’s hospitals cook food fresh on site, and now some of Ireland’s general hospitals are following suit.
The UL Hospital group and the South-South West Group which includes hospitals such as Cork University Hospital, Mallow and Bantry, operate the cook-fresh system. (The hospital group noted that the cash figure supplied to the MoS does not include light meals outside of the three main meals per day.)
However other groups such as Saolta – whose member hospitals include UH Galway – and the Ireland East grouping, which includes the Midland Hospital in Mullingar and Wexford General Hospital – use the cook-chill system.
A spokeswoman for Saolta in the west of Ireland told the MoS: ‘All hospitals in Ireland [use the] cookchill system. The majority of food supplied to patients in our hospitals is purchased fresh, cooked on the premises and served to the patients.’
While the HSE declined to comment further on the findings they were keen to stress that the overall catering costs released under the FOI Act were not all in relation to food and some included food, food deliveries and equipment.
However, the number of meals produced by each hospital allowed this newspaper to make an estimation on the amount of money being spent by HSE-run hospitals.
The overall catering costs for the HSE-run hospitals in 2015 was €30,733,815. The prison service spent €7,333,751 on food in the same year.
Aoife Hearne, of nutrition consultancy service Nutrition Solutions, says it’s time for ‘more forward thinking’ when it comes to hospital food. Ms Hearne, the in-house dietitian with RTÉ’s Operation Transformation, told the MoS: ‘We need more forward thinking and the registered dietitians need to be part of the purchasing department.
‘Right now the options served don’t meet the Department of Health recommendations in line with the new food guide pyramid.
‘One of the worst menus that jumped out at me was St Luke’s Hospital [in Dublin] which is an oncology hospital dealing with cancer patients.
‘The menu has processed meats on it five out of seven days which is crazy. The World Health Organisation has cautioned against the overeating of processed meats like bacon, and ham. For me it’s quite
Eight hospitals spend less than €2 per meal ‘Hospital food should be of the best quality’
shocking to see it on a hospital menus five out of seven days.
‘Look, I totally understand, I used to work in an oncology unit but I would always err on the side of more nutritious food. A hospital is a place where we should have the best quality food. Freezing food is one issue and while it does retain some of the nutrients, the bigger issue I have is re-heating this food.
‘Some of the meals served in hospitals are microwaved within an inch of their lives.
‘The problem is that if you are starting with food that is already low quality, then boiling things like vegetables, the nutrients are lost. I suppose to me, the average cost of €2.88 or approximately that is quite shocking.
‘As Hippocrates once said: “let food be thy medicine”.’
A spokesman for the Department of Health told the MoS: ‘A programme to improve the quality of food in our hospitals is a key commitment in the Programme for a Partnership Government.’
The spokesman said Health Minister Simon Harris had written to the acute hospitals highlighting the ‘importance of good nutrition’, and hospital groups are working with the HSE to develop a nutrition policy.
The HSE indicated in documents released under FOI that it is undertaking efforts to reduce costs and achieve efficiencies across all bought services, including food costs.
It also indicated that not all catering costs related to food in documents supplied.
‘Good nutrition a key component of care’