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The poor quality of hospital meals has long been talked about. How many articles, NIK audits or reports from non-governmental organizations that have been sounding the alarm for over ten years now. The situation in the institutions subordinate to the National Health Fund has not changed. Ba! In the era of the coronavirus pandemic, it is even more difficult, because families do not bring food to patients, and sometimes food packages are stuck at hospital gatehouses.
- The fact that the quality of hospital food leaves much to be desired are thundered by patients, Supreme Audit Office and non-governmental organizations. According to the Watchdog Polska Civic Network, there is about 6 food per patient per day–8 zł
- After surgery to remove cancerous tumors, Beata poisoned herself with food in the hospital. She showed what the meals look like
- Most often, patients complain about the quality of products and small portions. It often happens that they get meals that are not adapted to their disease
- You can find more such stories on the TvoiLokony home page
PLN 6 per day for food for the patient
The kind of rivalry lasts just as long – who can be fed for a smaller amount – the patient or the prisoner? While a few years ago the comparison of the nutritional rate in prison and hospital was the winner of the first one, last year the website for the families of prisoners (www.zpozdrowieniem.pl) informed that: «The nutritional rate for one meal oscillates between PLN 4 (!). This amount includes both food and drink. For comparison, the daily nutritional rate in a hospital is on average PLN 15-30 per one patient ».
It should be added that what we mean by the nutritional rate and the cost of a meal is something else. The former covers the costs of hiring staff – cooks, drivers, electricity, gas, logistics, etc. and the purchase of food products, i.e. boiler charge. According to the organization Network Civic Watchdog Polska, which in the fall of 2019 took a closer look at hospital food, the value of food products used to prepare all meals is PLN 6-8. In many cases, the boiler charge accounted for only a third of the hospital’s expenditure on feeding patients.
In 2021, there is still an abrupt increase in inflation. For PLN 6, we will not buy as much as a year ago. Meanwhile, rates have not changed, and most hospitals have long-term contracts with food delivery companies.
- See also: The Ministry wants to improve the image of food in hospitals. See what meals in other countries look like
Hospital soup poisoning does not surprise the medical staff
This is e.g. in the provincial hospital where Beata is treated for cancer. Due to the disease, she spent a dozen or so days there, first research, then surgery, and now chemistry. Shocked by the quality of the meals, she asked the nurse if it had always been so bad and received a reply that the hospital was writing a tender for delivering food to the wards. The company that is currently doing this has signed a two-year contract. At first the meals were fit for food, then the quality began to decline systematically.
Ms Beata drilled the topic further and tried to talk to the employees who bring food to her room. She learned nothing. All of them were of Ukrainian nationality and when asked about the secrets of preparing lunch or dinner, they replied that they did not understand.
Both she and the rest of the patients lying in a room with several people saved themselves with products provided by the family. In this facility, relatives can leave parcels at the reception desk only at certain times (most often colliding with working hours), and when they reach the sick, it is up to the staff. It is not always time to go for them, it is not always goodwill. It often happens that the patient on the first day does not have his own cutlery or mug, and in order to eat anything, he has to rely on helpful companions in his misfortunes.
But why was Beata so concerned about the hospital wastes? Of course, not because of greed, just a day after a complicated operation to remove two tumors, she poisoned herself with the first meal. It was a barley shop.
– Actually, the name Krupnik is a bit exaggerated, because all the soups we received looked the same – says the patient (she does not give the name or the name of the hospital, because she has not finished the treatment process yet and does not want to go to it). – They were gray-brown in color, with pieces of vegetables cut into sticks floating in them. I called this one a barley soup because it contained groats. Unfortunately, immediately after eating, the soup began to remind itself of itself, and in the evening there was diarrhea. I reported poisoning and I was given medication … The doctor on duty did not seem particularly surprised, so I suppose it was not an isolated case. He comforted me with the words: “At least you know that the intestines are already working after the surgery”.
Mrs. Beata was not the only person who was hurt by the barley soup. The neighbor from the bed next door reacted with vomiting, another with strong flatulence. They all went on a matzo diet that one of them brought home. As it turned out later, cases of indigestion of varying severity in this ward are on the agenda.
What about other meals? Ms Beata had an easily digestible diet recommended, however, she claims that it ended with providing her with this information. She was given both cabbage and bean soup.
– Breakfast consisted of two slices of bread, a slice of cold meat, the one with 70% meat, and a cup of cereal coffee with milk – he says. – Plus a 10-gram cube of margarine. There was no dairy at all – no eggs, no curd. Once there was a sweet roll with a bit of marmalade.
The two-course dinner consisted of a lukewarm, watery, tasteless soup and a second course – most often with potatoes and a half-raw piece of fish with skin (that’s on Fridays) and a micro-vegetable – mostly carrots or celery sticks. Sometimes dumplings with canned meat dissolved in hot water were served. There were broccoli on Sundays, which, as we know, is not easily digestible. There was never a single piece of real meat, it was always canned. Dinner is again two slices of bad bread, a microcube of margarine and a hard-boiled egg with one lettuce leaf or a breakfast cold meat or … marmalade. After boiling, the eggs had to be left in cold water for a long time, because ice colds would arrive at the ward, and after peeling a greenish yolk would appear. Always drink tea from the cauldron, which the patients usually gave up. They preferred to make a real brew on their own.
– Once a doctor told a patient complaining about dinner that there was a chicken fillet once a week – remembers Beata. – This fillet is probably a hospital legend, because during my visits I have never found chicken, not even on Sunday.
– But my attention was drawn to potatoes from the evaporator – he adds. – Cooked with shells and then mixed. This is how livestock feed is prepared. Something horrible! Another interesting discovery was the cold cuts. When she sat on the plate for an hour, it changed color to such an extent that I would not dare to take it in my mouth. For several days we got the same bread from one delivery. While it was acceptable on the first day, it was sour on the third day.
Once a week, all patients completed questionnaires assessing the hospital’s services. Only the meals always turned out negative. The same features of hospital food were repeated in the questionnaires: stale, unappetizing, and not meeting the requirements of the diet. For a person who eats normally, the amount of food was embarrassingly small, and from XNUMX p.m., when dinner was served, to XNUMX in the morning, i.e. breakfast, the patient is doomed to coping on her own.
What did a vegetarian eat at the hospital?
Agnieszka, 35, spent eight May days in one of the hospitals in Łódź. The situation was different here, because the meals were prepared on the spot in the hospital kitchen. On the second day of the stay, the nurse asked her if there were any things she couldn’t eat. When Agnieszka said that she did not eat meat and dairy products or ordinary bread, also because of food allergies, it seemed that it was not a problem. She was prescribed a gluten-free, meat-free and dairy-free diet. She was given a different bread, but after eating it, her stomach ached, so probably the bread did not quite meet the requirements of the diet.
– Although the diet was supposed to be dairy-free, for breakfast every day I had butter in a plastic mini-wrapping and a jam pack of the same size. Gluten-free bread from time to time, she recalls. – When I ran out of bread, I got nothing. Fortunately, my husband provided me with a package of food and I didn’t have to eat just jam or artificial honey, which also happened.
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For dinner, the same as in the case of Beata, watery soup, although a few times they were thicker and they could be eaten. The main course was vegetables every day – cauliflower, broccoli, carrots and potatoes. Once it happened that the staff forgot about Agnieszka’s meatless diet, so the second course consisted only of potatoes.
“For consolation, the lunch portions were large,” he says. – I really could eat soup and a full entree. Dinners tended to resemble breakfast, although once I was given rice with cinnamon and apples. And it was even tasty, although I don’t understand why the dish was supplemented with three slices of bread.
Of course, after the surgery, Mrs. Agnieszka was recommended light meals – no raw vegetables, nothing bloating. Even so, for the next week her dinners consisted of cauliflower or broccoli. That a diet for itself and life for itself was also evident on the example of a diabetic and easily digestible diet. Here, the meals included white bread, white rice and potatoes.
– The worst situation was on Sundays and public holidays – he says. – Often something was missing, so I got a breakfast of a lettuce leaf and jam… and that’s it. It just so happened that my friend was in a different hospital at the time, so we exchanged photos of our meals. In response to the photo of lettuce with jam, I got a photo of pierogi with bread.
In order to do justice to the facility, it should be added that although Agnieszka’s meals were very overcooked and absolutely underdone, even with salt, everything was fit to eat, nothing ever hurt her. On the other hand, the vigilant patient from the neighboring room, who had received a blue and strangely smelling mortadella for breakfast, gave it back immediately …
– She did not report it to anyone – says Agnieszka. – Everyone has got used to being given such food and they do not argue with the attendants or nurses. For breakfast and dinner, they eat home-made food from packets, and hospital meals stay on plates or end up in a basket.
What money, such food
In the Act on healthcare services financed from public funds, the nutrition of patients appears as an accompanying service and is to be adequate to their health condition. That’s what the rules say. On the other hand, the amount of the daily allowance is set by the head of a given medical facility.
According to the Supreme Audit Office, it is precisely the lack of regulations regarding the quality of meals and the nutritional rate per patient that is the reason for the poor quality of hospital food. This is the conclusion of the 2018 audit report.
NIK also emphasizes that hospitals are not obliged to employ dietitians. There are no penalties for irregularities in the nutrition of patients, and there are no uniform nutritional standards, because the minister did not issue a regulation that would define the energy value of meals and standardize the names and ingredients of diets. Hospitals are rarely overseen by external caterers, but above all, there is simply not enough money to cover the cost of food.
In June 2019, provisions amending the Act on healthcare services financed from public funds entered into force. This time, the President of the National Health Fund could control the implementation of the contract for the provision of healthcare services, including nutrition for patients (section III a). Unfortunately, we do not know about any of them.
Hospitals where our interlocutors were treated did not respond to e-mails with questions about meals.
This may interest you:
- “If it weren’t for my family, I would be hungry from morning till night”. This is what hospital meals look like
- How to feed the patient before and after surgery?
- Cancer patient’s diet
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