Medical staff need to communicate more with hospital caterers, and service levels must improve, if patients are to benefit fully from the improved hospital food now being produced.
This was the message from speakers addressing the annual conference of the Hospital Caterers Association (HCA) in Birmingham last week.
It was generally agreed that healthcare catering had improved under the Government's Better Hospital Food programme, but Professor Simon Allison, head of clinical nutrition at the Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, told delegates that there was no point producing better food if it was not delivered properly to patients.
"You can produce the most wonderful food, but if it isn't transported and served in good condition, patients won't eat it," he said.
Allison stressed the importance of food in the overall treatment of patients, saying that better nutritional support improved the rates of recovery and that earlier intervention of appropriate diets shortened a patient's stay in hospital.
But he said that more communication was needed between doctors, nurses and caterers. "It is important ward staff identify individual patient needs and communicate with caterers about specific requirements," he said.
Citing a case where a food tray had been placed out of reach of an elderly patient, he suggested that failure to talk about patient needs in the past had added to a lot of the problems associated with patient recovery.
HCA chairman Neil Watson-Jones defended hospital caterers, saying that the biggest problem was that they "had no direct control over what happened at the ward end". He agreed, however, that caterers could "get out more" and talk to housekeepers, nursing staff and ward sisters.
Earlier, delegates had heard from Loyd Grossman, chairman of the Government's Better Food Panel, who said that a great deal of progress had been made in improving hospital food but that there was "still a long way to go".
Grossman said that greater emphasis should now be placed on non-food aspects of the meal experience. For example, patients should be able to have meals away from their beds and with family and friends at off-ward catering facilities in the hospital.
Peter Wearmouth, chief executive of NHS Estates, agreed that hospitals needed to concentrate on the service of food. "Patients are our customers," he said, adding that patients received "great food, had good menus, but they thought the delivery was poor".
He added that, as housekeepers were introduced as part of ward teams, they would need to be trained in "hotel" skills.
By Forbes Mutch