Improve your food or close, hospitals told

Improve your food or close, hospitals told

HOSPITALS and care homes will be forced to improve their food under plans to give a new watchdog powers to monitor nutrition.

By Louise Barnett
Consumer Editor

They could even be threatened with closure if found persistently failing to provide decent food.
The move follows the _
Daily Express Respect for the Elderly campaign highlighting the poor quality of hospital food.

DAILY
EXPRESS

CRUSADE

The number of patients discharged from hospital suffering malnutrition has risen dramatically since Labour came to power.

A total of 139,127 were discharged malnourished in 2006-07, an 84 per cent increase on 1997-98.
Now Ministers are consulting on including hospital and care home food under the new Care Quality Commission’s remit.
Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said: “A good, varied diet is all the more important when you are poorly. We want to see more hospitals and care homes emulating the best.”
Last year the Government unveiled plans to tackle malnutrition among elderly patients amid concerns that nurses were failing to help patients to eat. The measures involved nurses being assessed on basic nutrition knowledge as part of their training.    Research shows malnourished patients stay in hospital longer and are three times as likely to have complications in surgery.
Ministers have been impressed with improved recovery rates at hospitals in Cornwall, where local produce is served. London’s Royal Brompton hospital has also been praised for its mainly organic menu.
The Daily Express campaign has found that many patients are too sick to feed themselves and, without help from nurses, do not eat their meals. There are fears that guidelines requiring patients to be monitored for malnutrition are not always followed.
Hospitals spend as little as 50p a head on patients’ meals, less than the average 62p spent on prison meals.