Decision report 201200313

Summary

Mrs C was unhappy with the quality of the food she received while in hospital. The board said that as she had not reported it to them when she was a patient they were unable to look into her concerns. They said that they had very few complaints about food standards and reported very good results from patient satisfaction surveys.

Mrs C then complained to us about poor food quality and that there was a lack of investigation into her complaint. It is not our role to monitor food quality in hospitals. However, we looked to see whether the food quality was effectively monitored and reviewed by the board. We also looked at the food quality results from patient surveys. In both cases we found that the board achieved high patient satisfaction results. We also noted a number of actions the board was taking in response to issues that had been identified. As the board appeared to achieve good quality food standards, and responded to problems when they arose, we did not uphold this complaint.

We did, however, uphold the complaint about the lack of investigation into Mrs C's concerns, but we did not make recommendations. We felt that the board could have examined whether there were any specific reasons why food quality might have been affected during the period of Mrs C's stay, and that they had missed the opportunity to tell her about the active steps they were taking to improve food quality.