Royal Brompton Hospital Food Project

The project improved hospital food by procuring local and regional organic food.  It has increased the nutritional content of all aspects of patients' diets. 

All food is cooked on site using seasonal ingredients from traceable sources.

2003/2004

1,753 hospital staff on site

Over 50,000 meals prepared for patients and staff

No charge to patients - charge in staff restaurant.

We operate our sustainable policy through sustainweb.org

We are leaders for the sustainable food strategy locally and across the NHS, particularly as concerns organic produce.  Our policies and attitudes have had a wide take up due to the succesfulness of the scheme.

We believe that the taste and quality of food is important and now use 27% locally sourced ingredients which represents 300K spent a year.  This investment in the community goes to support local farmers and suppliers.  Out of every 25 pounds spent, 19 go towards local development and job creation and maintenance in the South East.

Using fresh organic local ingredients has improved the flavour of our food thus driving up its consumption in our staff restaurants, which has increased income from staff facilities by 22% over the last 5 years.  The patient satisfaction rate at the Royal Brompton is 20% higher than the National NHS Hospitals' average.

We are very keen to ensure this success is shared not only within the NHS but with other Government Catering departments and we are already sharing procurement for local food with colleagues and other NHS hospitals and care homes in West London which we call the Chelsea Cluster

The key word for the future is collaboration and this means perhaps with contractors and supermarkets who also seem to be successful in procurement but need some persuasion on local and regional food.

We also have a local food hub now on the NHS Supply Chain Nominated suppliers list and debated at the Hospital Caterers Association.  Our work with organisatoins like Sustain and the soil association have been valuable.

Our service policy is for high patient satisfaction rates, this is based on good communication and the patient is asked on every occasion a menu is formed or changed and through our ward focus group meetings, change often comes from these meetings.  We are concerned and prevent patients leaving hospital undernourished and ensure that none of our resident patients suffer from malnutrition.

We work closely with AGE UK on their recommendations for feeding the elderly.

We are also keen that we work with the local community and make efforts for them to use our catering restaurant facilities.

Our evidence is really simple in that food satisfaction is easly acknowledged by talking to customers/ patients at meal times and throughout our regularly scheduled meetings.  We know that our initiatives work well due to the high level of appreciation of the food we serve which is reflected in the letters of appreciation and thanks from our users.

We believe that our good food contributes to the patients' well being and recovery and reduces the cost of keeping patients in hospital.  While they are in hospital good food reduces the stress levels and the medical staff can get their work done more easily and quickly.

Education of the patient is important as the main reasons they are ill are often lifestyle related which can be the wrong diet, smoking, alcohol and lack of excercise related.  We work with our dieticians to ensure the healthier diet is applied in hospitals and that when discharged patients have a better understanding of how to ensure they enjoy a varied and healthy diet when at home.

We believe this is a valuable service and will prevent patients needing further treatments.  We have recognised that as the general public are becoming more obese and that instances of diabetes are on the increase, it is of vital importance that we educate our patients in in not just a healthier diet but also in understanding the value of different foods within their diet.

Royal Brompton Hospital Food Project
Sydney Street
London
SW3 6NP

t: 020 7351 8433
e: m.duckett@rbht.nhs.uk