Sodexo gains accreditation at Hillingdon and Mount Vernon Hospitals

To achieve the accreditation, Sodexo had to demonstrate that its quality management system met the requirements of the ISO standards. As part of the process, five Sodexo employees were trained to be internal ISO 9001 auditors assessing systems and processes at various stages. Patient feeding supervisor Syed Shah; domestic supervisor Joginder Sirah; diet chef Pauline Whittaker and Pick and Packer Jane Potter, all from Hillingdon and housekeeper James Price from Mount Vernon, underwent two days' training for their new responsibilities. All 350 Sodexo employees based across the two hospitals were briefed and encouraged to participate by coming up with ideas to improve services and by talking about why ISO standards are important to them. An education programme was also set up which included management presentations to the Sodexo team and client. This was very important to the process as auditors can ask questions to randomly selected staff. The benefits of the accreditation include quality assurance for patients on the standards of cleaning and catering and continuous improvement of service and standards through audit, review and action. It took the Sodexo four months to achieve the accreditation and now they will begin an audit and internal review process to retain the accreditation. Hillingdon Hospital is an acute and specialist services provider in London, and is the designated hospital for Heathrow Airport for receiving accident and emergency patients, whilst Mount Vernon Hospital is a modern Diagnostic and Treatment Centre offering state of the art operating theatres for elective surgery.