Hospital and Food Service – Update Report

Upholding hospital standards: ensuring quality care in NHS trusts

It is the responsibility of every healthcare organisation in the UK to provide the highest level of care possible for their patients, staff and visitors. The National Standards for Healthcare Food and Drink, published in November 2022 represent a backbone of quality care, and a benchmark that upholds patient safety, efficiency and effectiveness in healthcare settings. Adherence to these standards is not just a matter of protocol; it’s a fundamental commitment to the well-being of your trust’s staff, visitors and patients.

In this review, NHS Supply Chain Food’s Procurement, Account Management and Culinary and Dietetic teams demonstrate how we support each trust’s aims and obligations to encourage increased well-being for hospital staff and visitors, optimal health outcomes for patients, and the introduction of a focus on sustainability, procurement and food waste.

Recent evidence from PAM (Premises Assurance Model) shows that healthcare organisations that see the greatest change have linked their success to the National Food and Drink Standards, working downstream with dynamic leadership at board level – ensuring that food and drink is always on the agenda, with catering dietitians and catering staff playing a pivotal role in ensuring that patients are eating for good health and staff are being provided with healthy choices.

NHS Supply Chain Client Account Management (CAM) teams

The CAM Teams add essential value to specific aspects of the Hospital Food Standards by:

• Supporting the Culinary and Dietetic team who have created and delivered a range of Culinary Concepts, Chef’s Academies, and Skills Workshop days. Your CAM can work in collaboration with trusts and the Supply Chain dedicated Operations Team to deliver Culinary Engagement Days in your hospital, as well as opportunities to network with other trusts at these events.
• Sourcing robust 24/7 food solutions in the form of vending: working with our Vending Solutions Buyer, to re-tender the whole vending provision. This has resulted in trusts having dramatically enhanced offers across hot and cold beverages and snacks, as well as increased revenue for the trusts in the form of more favourable rebates over a longer contracted period. This work has supported the mandatory standard: ‘NHS organisations must be able to demonstrate that they have suitable 24/7 food service provision, which is appropriate for their demographic’.
• Offering food waste monitoring, again, resulting in savings for your trust, whilst also promoting best practice, and assisting trusts to conform with their green plans. This approach of monitoring, measuring and reducing food waste is in line with the mandatory standard: ‘Organisations must monitor, manage and actively reduce their food waste from production waste, plate waste and unserved meals’.

NHS Supply Chain Procurement and Governance team

Within NHS Supply Chain, our Procurement and Governance team show demonstrable support for NHS trusts across England.

Regarding food safety, we have our food safety auditors, Micron2. They are fully engaged and monitoring all suppliers for the required accreditation on their set frequency. This is paramount to ensure that within our teams the products and solutions we provide have suppliers who are accredited. Any that cease to have accreditation we take steps to remedy this with Micron2. The supplier will cease trading their goods until they are fully accredited.

With complaints, we have a full complaints process in line with our service level agreements. Our complaints process is monitored and followed closely. All complaints come through NHS Supply Chain to our procurement team who liaise with the supplier and customer services team which ensure a smooth resolution for the trust(s) involved.

For food waste, we have developed a Waste Saving Methodology that has been primarily used on delivered ready prepared meals to date. This encourages a review of the waste involved in the entire process. It provides better solutions for your trust to minimise waste by looking at portion and batch sizes of the meals. We also have a range of packaging available on products on the online catalogue to help utilise the best packaging solution for a trust. We also have varying sizes of products available to provide a solution for each trust with their specific storage and facility capacity.

Finally, with 24/7 vending and food and drink provision this is something included on our Hot Beverage and Vending Solutions framework. With numerous options available for customers from chilled, frozen, and ambient meals and more recently introduced as part of the new Delivered Ready Prepared Meals tender to include retail ranges as well as staff and patient ranges to provide a solution for all, this offer launched in March 2024.

Operations / Culinary and Dietetic team

In 2021 the first NHS Chef competition was first held to raise the profile of such a valuable part of the workforce. The competition, now in its fourth year, has seen over 120 chefs refine their skills, receive enhanced levels of training and mentoring and provide a stage for them to showcase their passion and expertise.

Photos of the winning chefs for 2021, 2022 and 2023

Sinto Jose and Sanish Thomas

Shelley Pearson-Smith and Erica Bell

Dylan Lucas and Darby Hayhurst

The NHS Chef competition is supplemented by our Chef’s Academy Programme. It’s a free event for trusts to participate in. It is also a great way for catering staff to learn new skills and recipes.

See our Useful Links section for further information on the Chef’s Academy Programme.

Our Chef’s Academy is a full packed day with innovative chef techniques and methods, industry insights and nutritional education. We believe our Chef’s Academy will inspire and create naturally more innovative kitchens and strengthen the hospital menu offering. It’s important that we support NHS Chefs to achieve their best.

The academy and the competition both work to recognise the development and training potential throughout our Chefs’ community. They both support the two mandatory standard of: ‘investing in a high calibre workforce’ and organisations demonstrating they have a ‘learning and development programme for all staff involved in healthcare food and drink services’.

Conclusion

As healthcare constantly evolves, so too must our commitment to upholding the standards that define excellence in patient care. Hospital Food Standards provide a framework for continuous improvement. It serves as a guide for NHS trusts to adapt to changing circumstances and embrace innovation. This culture of continuous improvement not only benefits patients but also fosters professional development and satisfaction among healthcare providers and the end user of their services.