A systematic approach to reduce hospital food waste based on patient experience

Dimuthu Rathnayake*, Shanti Dalpatadu

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Background/Aims
Organisational research has been shown to enhance the quality of hospital diet services. This study investigated methods to reduce food waste in the inpatient facilities of a large teaching hospital in Sri Lanka.

Methods
A patient experience survey was conducted to assess the quality of hospital diets. A new diet process was formulated and evaluated based on the results.

Results
Patients were satisfied with the food and food service quality, but preferred to eat homemade food during longer hospital stays. Before the intervention, 55% of breakfast meals, 62% of lunch meals and 57% of dinner meals were wasted. Post-intervention evaluation showed a significant reduction in food waste to less than 4% for all meal types.

Conclusions
Offering patients the opportunity to express meal preference through the diet ordering process reduced hospital food waste to less than 4% in total.

Original languageEnglish
JournalBritish Journal of Healthcare Management
Volume26
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 02 Oct 2020
Externally publishedYes

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