Healthy food replacing supplements saves £300,000
A SCOTS health board is replacing pills and potions with real food in a move which acknowledges the sentiment behind the old adage about eating an apple a day.
NHS Highland is on course to save £300,000 a year by phasing out costly nutritional supplements and replacing them with good old fashioned meals.
The Food First initiative is proving to be just what the doctor ordered for lots of elderly people. Evelyn Newman, NHS Highland’s nutrition and dietetic adviser, with responsibility for oral nutritional supplements prescribing, said the board had decided on the change last year.
The move followed concerns voiced by NHS Scotland’s Effective Prescribing Programme, over the quality, safety, clinical and cost effectiveness of supplements.
Now clinical and social care staff across the Highlands, including GPS, nurses, care home workers and cooks, speech therapists, nurses, dietitians, and pharmacists, are working together to help reduce or eliminate the use of supplements.
In the care home sector, a decision was taken to effectively stop their use for residents and service users.
Mrs Newman said: “This approach is good for people’s general health, it encourages more social interaction at mealtimes, and creates an improved general sense of wellbeing.”
“At one Inverness care home, it has changed the residents’ whole mealtime experience. Families, too, have been really positive about the new approach taken.
“After lunch times, they say it has meant that their relatives are more alert and sociable and have more energy to walk in the garden, rather than dozing in the lounge. Staff notice that residents engage more with each other, are able to go out for walks and there is a general feeling of improvement in people’s wellbeing.”
The health board is winning financially too. Mrs Newman said: “Since we took the decision to transform ONS prescribing, there has been a 25 per cent reduction in the total cost of spend associated with ONS in NHS Highland. That equates to a £300,000 saving in one year.”
The groundwork for the initiative had been put in place through staff training and education programmes.