Hospital food is improving

Under the PEAT programme, every hospital in England with more than 10 beds is assessed annually and given a rating of excellent, good, acceptable, poor, or unacceptable. The teams inspect the standards of food, cleanliness, infection control, and patient environment to give the hospital an overall rating. Each site is inspected by a PEAT team which consists of teams of NHS staff, including nurses, matrons, doctors, catering and domestic service managers. They also include patients and members of the public. Further research revealed that 98.5% of trusts scored acceptable or above for their patient environments in NHS hospitals. Martin Fletcher, chief executive of the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), which oversees the management of the PEAT programme, said: "Both NHS trusts and the public can now view how their local hospitals have performed on making their facilities clean, comfortable and safer for patients."