Charles: Improve food in hospitals to help patients get better
PRINCE Charles yesterday called for the quality of food in hospitals to be made a ‘clinical priority’.
He wants the NHS to see ‘food as a medicine in itself ’ and claims better meals would speed up recovery times.
He also made clear that he felt the changes were long overdue and could have benefits in other areas of healthcare including mal- nutrition among the elderly. Last year The Campaign for Better Hospital Food accused NHS Trusts of misrepresenting patient satisfaction with meals.
It found that while many Trusts regularly claim 98 per cent approval rates, patient surveys reveal nearly half are dissatisfied with the food.
Many hospitals spend just £3 a day on meals for in-patients, compared with £5 a day set aside for prisoners. Regulations control the quality of food served in government departments, schools and prisons, but there is no such system in the NHS.
‘Surely patients … have the same right to good food as government ministers, school children and prisoners?’ asked the campaign’s coordinator, Alex Jackson, who was at yesterday’s reception.
The event at Clarence House was organised by Prince Charles and the Department of Health, for NHS commissioners. It highlighted the Hospital Food Exemplar CQUIN (Commissioning for Quality and Innovation), brought in last month, which allows commissioners to reward hospital trusts for delivering high quality food.
In a speech Charles said it was important to ‘see food as a medicine in itself’. The prince said that what patients eat ‘will feed enormously into improving not only people’s health but also reducing the levels of malnutrition amongst the elderly’.
‘You can imagine just how delighted I was that last month NHS England launched an initiative CQUIN, which for the first time actually encouraged commissioners to make hospital food a clinical priority,’ he added.
The prince pointed to Mike Duckett, former catering manager at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, as an ‘inspiration’.
Mr Duckett persuaded hospital authorities to let him open its shutdown kitchens, hire an organic chef and link up with local farmers in Kent so that fresh seasonal produce could be supplied to the hospital.
He also set up a restaurant for staff and visitors that made money and slashed food waste – all on the existing budget. This kind of set-up, Charles said, created a ‘virtuous circle’ of sustainability, helping the local economy and ensuring better patient health.
Mr Duckett said: ‘I go for quality over cost each time. For too many years now hospitals have been using the meals they serve … as a means of cutting costs, putting pressure on outside catering companies to deliver cheap and frankly sub-standard food … I actually found it cheaper in many respects to make the food from scratch rather than buy it in.’
Nottingham University Hospital Trust, which also transformed its menu, was awarded a Food For Life mark by the Soil Association, of which Charles is president.
Catering manager John Hughes said the cost of food per head is £4 a day, adding: ‘When you think that we are also sourcing all our food locally and in doing so benefiting the local economy … it’s a very good deal.’