Abstract
BackgroundFood and nutritional care quality must be assessed and scored, so as to improve health institution efficacy. This study aimed to detect and compare actions related to food and nutritional care quality in public and private hospitals.MethodsInvestigation of the Hospital Food and Nutrition Service (HFNS) of 37 hospitals by means of structured interviews assessing two quality control corpora, namely nutritional care quality (NCQ) and hospital food service quality (FSQ). HFNS was also evaluated with respect to human resources per hospital bed and per produced meal.ResultsComparison between public and private institutions revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between the number of hospital beds per HFNS staff member (p = 0.02) and per dietitian (p < 0.01). The mean compliance with NCQ criteria in public and private institutions was 51.8% and 41.6%, respectively. The percentage of public and private health institutions in conformity with FSQ criteria was 42.4% and 49.1%, respectively. Most of the actions comprising each corpus, NCQ and FSQ, varied considerably between the two types of institution. NCQ was positively influenced by hospital type (general) and presence of a clinical dietitian. FSQ was affected by institution size: large and medium-sized hospitals were significantly better than small ones.ConclusionsFood and nutritional care in hospital is still incipient, and actions concerning both nutritional care and food service take place on an irregular basis. It is clear that the design of food and nutritional care in hospital indicators is mandatory, and that guidelines for the development of actions as well as qualification and assessment of nutritional care are urgent.
Highlights
Food and nutritional care quality must be assessed and scored, so as to improve health institution efficacy
Nutritional status in hospital inpatient has been the object of many studies [6,7,8,9,10,11], but there are only a few literature works on quality indicators concerning hospital food and nutrition services (HFNSs) as well as food and nutritional care actions conducted by dietitians in health institutions [12,13,14,15]
Sixty-seven point six percent of the sample consisted of private hospitals, including philanthropic institutions (10 hospitals), whilst 32.4% were public hospitals, 18.9% of which were university hospitals and 13,5% were government institutions
Summary
Food and nutritional care quality must be assessed and scored, so as to improve health institution efficacy. Hospital expectations often place the food and nutrition service as an undervalued support service [16], even though changes and improvements in hospital diets and nutritional care can prevent nutritional aggravations [7,8,12,17] that have a negative impact on the length of hospital stay and hospitalization costs [10,11,18,19,20]. Such amelioration can impact patient’s perception of the hospitalization experience positively [21,22]. A comparative study on nutritional care management involving two hospital institutions, namely a French hospital and a Brazilian hospital, has detected fragmentation of dietitians’ actions due to existence of different interlocutors and to the unpredictability inherent to food preparation procedures [23]
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