The Good Food Project

Measuring the Patient Experience with Hospital Food

What is The Good Food Project?

Nourish, in partnership with the Putting Quality Food on the Plate study (Duizer & Keller, funding from Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs) has developed The Good Food Project which aims to better understand the patient’s food experience by using a standardized tool. We believe good food is an essential part of care, not just an amenity.

Measuring patient satisfaction through traditional satisfaction surveys has not addressed what may be of importance or value to patients, and may lack the sensitivity to measure the impact of quality improvements. Because a variety of tools are in use there is no ability to compare the results of surveys with other organizations. If organizations all used the same standardized tool, results can be easily compared and benchmarks established. Having this information supports advocacy efforts for quality improvement initiatives that can improve patient food services. This is of critical importance as it is well established that high satisfaction with hospital meals is closely aligned with food intake. Given the high rates of malnutrition identified in Canadian hospitals, quality initiatives aimed at improving patient satisfaction with meals has great potential to reduce rates of malnutrition in hospitals.

The Good Food Project is seeking hospitals to join us in using the Patient Hospital Food Experience Questionnaire, the tool currently being tested as part of the Ontario based study Putting Quality Food on the Plate. Two hospitals in Saskatchewan have already tested this tool, collecting data from 145 patients. Through this process we have gained excellent insights to both streamline the data collection process for other Nourish sites, as well as important data to better understand the patient experience and opportunities for improvements at these hospitals.

Collecting data using this standardized tool from hospitals across Canada will contribute to the development of a national database that will more fully describe patient expectations, develop benchmarks, compare services, anticipate impacts of quality improvement efforts and provide the good food that patients need for health, well-being and healing.

If your site participates in The Good Food Project, you will…

Gain a better understanding of patients’ expectations of hospital food, and discover whether your site is meeting those expectations.
Show your patients that you value their opinion and want their voice to be heard.
Identify areas to target quality initiatives – including specific days and meals where you can improve.
Fill your suggestion box! Patients providing comments directly helps you determine what foods they want to see more of and what they suggest to improve on.
Obtain evidence to support advocating for change to improve the patient food experience, and in doing so improve patients’ satisfaction with their hospital experience overall.
Receive anonymous aggregated data of other food service models in Canada, and see how your food service model and patient satisfaction compares
Predict future food-based quality initiatives and effects on patient satisfaction and intake

In addition to your site contributing to the development of a national database, we will also generate reports that describe the specific areas you are doing well in, and the specific areas you can improve on!

I'm Interested! How do I get started?

To participate your site must be a hospital that provides acute care or rehabilitative services to adult patients. We are asking each hospital commit to providing 75 completed Patient Hospital Food Experience Questionnaires and the corresponding patient demographic information. For smaller hospitals (<200 beds), we are seeking a commitment of 20% of your bed count, with 10 completed surveys being the minimum. This data collection can occur at any time – it can be collected slowly over a longer period, or during a survey blitz – whatever works best for your hospital. The patient questionnaire takes just an average of 12 minutes to complete and we will look after all the data entry and analysis. The deadline for completed questionnaires is February 1, 2019.

In addition, to participate we also need the following items :

Research Ethics Approval (this may or may not be required at your institution)
Site Survey – information about your facility (to be completed once by the NFS Leader)

If you are interested in participating or learning more about the Good Food Project, please contact

TheGoodFoodProjectRe@saskhealthauthority.ca

for more details.

A tool kit, with everything you need to participate has been developed to assist you and we have a research assistant to help guide you through the process.

Reports

Two hospitals in Saskatchewan piloted the Patient Hospital Food Experience Questionnaire in June and July of 2018. These hospitals have 250- and 450-beds, and operate on the same 7-day menu cycle. Over a six-week period, 145 patients participated in the questionnaire. From the data, these hospitals were able to measure patients expectations of hospital food, identify their strengths and target areas to improve on within patient food services. Check out some examples of the data!

Examples