The revised document has involved key stakeholders of which the HCA is a key lead. The HCA have detailed that they did not want any further new processes to be produced and said that it is essential that all boards, caterers and clinical teams work together to ensure that the Food Standards is given full support from the top down and down up.
Andy Jones, national chair, Hospital Caterers Association said: “The HCA warmly welcomes the revised document which fully integrates patients in the assessment process. However, we have to ensure that the Standards are delivered and communicated correctly firstly, and that all chief executives make the Standards a Board issue, which is reported and updated to the Board on a minimum of a three monthly basis. And that all caterers deliver the standards and show that our service is there to meet the needs of the patients for all hospital food across NHS Scotland.
“Whilst I believe that patient involvement is essential to providing a more accurate perspective of views on food, drink and general catering services and to identifying where improvements should be made, we must not allow ourselves to become distracted by overly focusing on scoring and league tables. It is key that our menus and beverage choice meet and are suitable for the patient groups we serve as well as being flexible in both their offering and adaptability.
"However, in order to achieve that across the board, a view needs to be taken about how some of the catering service is managed in future, such as night time ward snacks and drinks, as these fall under ward budgets and are outside of the caterer’s area of responsibility. Consequently, in order to improve the quality of all aspects of patient food and drink provision, the caterer should be allowed to take responsibility for the whole of the ward service.
“What the Food, Fluid and Nutritional Standards clearly show is that because of the multi-disciplinary nature of a patient’s nutritional care, we must continue to work across all departments to ensure consistency and support for a patient’s total food and drink provision."
The revised food, fluid and nutritional care standards document can be found at: http://www.healthcareimprovementscotland.org/our_work/patient_safety/improving_nutritional_care/nutritional_care_standards.aspx