to think that meals in hospital shouldn't be free?

[quimstrings]

It just seems a bit strange. You'd have to pay for it if you were at home. The cost of feeding hospital patients must be astronomical, and the food (in my quite extensive experience) is pretty crappy. Cheap, badly cooked, and in many cases unsuitable for specific dietry requirements.

Wouldn't most people be happy to pay for their meals, and in return expect to be served appealing, healthy food?

Obviously patients in for extended periods or those on benefits should be offered a free/heavily subsidised option.

It would require some investment to completely change the system - but surely it would save millions in the long-run?

What do you think?

Flippin hell - my threads usually get ignored! Really pleased to have started an interesting debate- but glad I had my hard-hat on.

Just want to clear up a couple of things about my op:

Making everyone pay would be entirely unethical. Some people have to pay for prescriptions and some don't - this system doesn't seem to cause too much of a problem, so perhaps a similar arrangement would work for hospital meals.

Those posts saying that there is no way they would have been prepared to pay for the crap food they've had in hospital have totally missed my point, which is:

1. I think hospital food, on the whole is of a poor standard and is not conducive to making people well.

2. Any suggestion of improvements/reform is likely to be met with 'can't do it due to budget issues'.

3. Therefore, were the system to be completely overhauled, whereby some patients (those who can afford it) were asked to pay part of the cost of their meals, then the daily budget-per-head could be increased and everyone could be served better meals.

Of course, it would be ridiculous to expect the nursing staff to be responsible in any way for manning the system.

There is now. It's downstairs in the shopping mall. Since the hospital food at St T's was dire to begin with, it at least offers an alternative.

OP - it would never save money, would never be a fair system, and would be the start of the beginning of the end where NHS care is concerned.

People who can afford it already do pay for their meals if the hospital food is crap, and there are countless other people (as illustrated very clearly by this thread) that cannot get their needs catered for at their hospital.

1. Hospital food, at least in my area, is fine. It's not gourmet by any standards but it is nice enough, and balanced.

1. I don't think reform of menu's is the most pressing thing that needs reforming about the NHS

1. As with something like means testing child benefit, or the winter fuel allowance, means testing patients for their eligibility for a 'free meal' would cost more than it would save.

I never ever say this on MN, but OP - you're simply just wrong. IMVHO, of course.

adequate nutrition is essential for recovery esp post-op.so the saving in catering would be dwarfed by cost of maintaining a poorly nourished pt post op and potential contraindications

there would be scant saving imo.onerous and hard to monitor and implement such a scheme

and for pts who are poor,elderly, have complex social/financial circumstances how would you address that?cant just starve em?

In all honesty, I know that the system I've suggested is impossibe. The practicalities of it would be unworkable.

I do feel v. strongly about a system that I think is just rubbish though.

Clearly some trusts are doing much better than others in the quality of meals they are providing. People seem to be having strikingly different experiences. This can't be purely subjective. So maybe a good job can be done within the current budget...

I'm no economic expert, so please tell me - does means-testing really always cost more than it saves? Really?

Does OP really think that the quality of hospital food would improve if patients were charged? I don't. What would happen is the the Trusts would pay less for the contract with the caterers - who, let's remember, are profit seeking companies - the caterers would then collect the money from the patients and the same food would be served. The only 'winners' would be the caterers.

Means testing?! I can see it now... domestics asking for a patient's P46 before they'll hand over lunch...

Maxpower makes a good point.

It can be done, I can't get patients discharged before lunch as most want to stay and have it on the ward as the food is too good.

well i can tell you this, i couldnt have afford to pay for food while i was in there for 3 weeks. I was too sick to do very much and having just had a baby was in no fit state to be worrying bout bills and food ect.

Magdalena,

We do not pay for hospital food from NI contributions.

What actually happens is that every single penny raised by taxes, etc, by any government goes into one big pot, called the Consolidated Fund.

This is then dished out to the individual departments according to how the cabinet set their budgets (involves a lot of horsetrading).

So by the same token, any money raised from road tax is not "ring-fenced" and used to pay for roads. Given how much gets raised in road tax, and then how little actually get spent on roads in comparison........

I am glad people have had good experiences of food in hospital.

Just thinking about the subject can bring me to the verge of tears.

Sounds ridiculous doesnt it?

Two years trying to get my desperately ill DD to eat, knowing that if she didnt the treatment she was having was more likely to make her ill or even kill her. Watching her burst into tears as a plate of crap was presented to her and her chemo ravaged taste buds. Realising with utter horror that she had developed anorexia. Being told I could 'always heat it up' when her dinner of cold burgers and chips arrived (despite being told we could NOT feed her reheated food). Being missed off the meal list because she arrived at the 'wrong' time on the ward.

Being on a ward full of kids with steroid induced ravenous appetites and NO food being available because the kitchens only provided food at set times.

I could go on for pages.

The teenage cancer ward at UCH has only got a vending machine because an ex patient raised funds for it!

I bloody hope things have improved. Never mind charging for it!

I wasn't going to add to the chorus of yabus but couldn't resist.

YABU.

Ilovedarts we pay for hospital food out of tax/NI. Yes it all goes into the CF but that's a moot (and technical) point.

Sorry, I meant IlovePlayingdarts!

I was in hospital for 12 days following ds's birth. By the time I left I weighed less than I had before I conceived ds. The food was absolutely terrible. In the end the staff took pity on me and let me heat up food in the staff microwave so I lived on M&S steam meals plus sandwiches brought in daily by my mum. The only thing that was edible and supplied by the hospital was the breakfast cereal.

If there had been an option to pay and that meant the food was edible I would have happily done so. Every meal (other than breakfast) the patients and catering staff would look at the trolley contents, then look up the meal/day on the list in the ward and try and work out what the food actually was. We rarely got it right.

YABVU - the food isnt free its paid for by taxes.

Chegirl - that is just awful.

This is an important issue. It really is.

Food is vital for physical and emotional wellbeing. When you're in hospital for a long period of time, the thing that breaks up the hideous, depressing monotony of the day is the mealtimes.

When the meals are also hideous and depressing, I don't believe that the body and mind are in the ideal position to get well.

The link betweeen sub-standard school meals and our children's learning was recognised, and (arguably) dealt with. Hospital food seems to be rarely discussed.

The question is - what the bloody hell can be done about it? Do the right people even acknowledge the problem?

chegirl, I personally would like to know more, if it's not too painful to talk about.

The OP itself is ridiculous, but this thread has raised such an important issue.

Am speechless that anyone would want to do this, I am rarely speechless.

What do you want to know Jareth. It does bring back painful memories but I am never one to miss the chance to talk about DD

I remember it being such a huge part of our life at the time. I used to spend a fortune trying to get her to eat. All the other parents did too.

It was easier in UCH than in our local hospital because there were no takeaways near.

Che - you sounded like you wanted to talk about it, it sounds completely totally awful (on top of everything else). I'm just interested in other people's experiences, i'm interested in how the NHS functions as a whole, but am fortunate enough to not know that much from a personal perspective.
Sorry if I'm being tactless.

Yup thats what the health service needs - more admin to deal with.

"steroid induced ravenous appetites" - oh god yes until you've been there you really don;t understand!

On the upside when I had stomach surgery last month I was completely nil by wouth for the best part of two days and on water for abother 2 then had one bowl of soup before coming home.

What do you suggest happens to those epople who do not pay? Do the nurses let them starve? OR send in the bailiffs?

I still think that removing the luxury cars and cutting the salaries of the chief executives and senior staff at hospitals would go someway towards paying for decent food.

The argument that top salaries and perks have to be paid to attract decent people is bt. there are many decent people, civil servant like myself, who are at the lower level of the pile, who would love to go into hospitals and start shaking things up in favour of the patients.

Not tactless at all Jareth

Its not something I particuarly want to revisit but I always do given the chance!

I think its something that you just wont get until you are faced with it. I didnt give it a second thought until I had to. I had worked in hospitals for years and like the stodge in the canteens.

Its not the food so much as the availability and the presentation. Nothing is going to look or taste good when its been in a heated trolley for a couple of hours.

You would just think that, while the rest of the county was obsessed with healthy school meals, the NHS would give consideration to what they were feeding to kids with cancer!