Half of hospital food served cold, says survey
Half of hospital patients do not receive food at the right temperature and 27% of meals delivered are not what patients asked for, according to new research.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /?>
The authors of the Patient Experience Survey 2002 described the results as "an astonishing failure rate, especially since many technologies and delivery options exist which should guarantee better results than this."
Graham Smith, operations services manager at Tolworth Hospital in Surrey, said that mobile serving units had built-in thermometers which should ensure food remains hot when it is served on wards, but added that the thermometers had to regularly calibrated: "If they're saying the food is tepid, then I find it worrying. I'd be wondering if they're taking the temperature properly."
The legal safety requirement is for fresh food to be cooked to 63°C and chilled food to 75°C.
Overall, the survey found that food provision met or exceeded expectations in 81% of cases, although 19% of patients were disappointed with their food and only 15% said it exceeded their expectations.
There was a trend towards increased satisfaction with increasing age. The report said it was not clear whether this was due to more modest expectations, or less ability to discriminate flavour and smell.
About 60% of patients said they felt that food was well presented all of the time.
But nearly 40% said the choice of food available was limited. Traditional British food was preferred by 71%, while the next most popular styles were Chinese (26%) and Italian (20%).
Only 35% of patients were aware of celebrity chefs' involvement in menu planning and of those less than half thought it had improved hospital food.
The survey, commissioned by Sodehxo Healthcare and the Patient's Association, was based on 2,139 completed questionnaires from 29 NHS trust hospitals across England. Catering at the hospitals was either in-house or provided by Sodexho.
