BORIS JOHNSON and Matt Hancock visited the Royal Berkshire Hospital today.
The prime minister and secretary of state for health and social care made a two-hour visit to the hospital to meet the trust’s acting Chief Executive, Nicky Lloyd and chair, Graham Sims.
They were given a behind the scenes look at the hospital’s catering operation and a tour of new facilities in the Minor Injuries Unit (MIU).
The visit was to mark the publication of the government’s Hospital Food Review, an independent study into hospital food, which was commissioned last year and was led by Bake Off star and cook, Prue Leith and Phil Shelley, who also joined the visit today.
The prime minister and Ms Leith were given a guided tour of the hospital’s kitchens and restaurant area where around 750,000 patient meals and 267,000 staff and visitor meals are made and served each year.
They visited the food storage rooms with catering manager, Daniel Cripps, and helped to pick the main ingredients for the day’s menus.
Meanwhile, the health and social care secretary was shown new x-ray equipment, which will be brought into use this week for patients in the Emergency Department Minor Injuries unit (MIU).
This tailor made x-ray kit is in a specially created space in the Minor Injuries Unit, a short distance from the main Emergency Department (ED), formerly known as A&E.
It will be able to scan 100 patients a day inside the MIU, easing pressure on ED teams and helping them to maintain safe social distancing in the ED waiting areas.
Before the new kit was installed, staff had to escort patients along the hospital corridor to the main x-ray suite.
Following his inspection of the site, Mr Hancock re-joined Mr Johnson to meet staff and to help the catering team serve breakfast to staff starting and finishing their shifts.
Ms Lloyd said: “It was an honour to welcome our visitors today and to be selected as the hospital from which the NHS Food Review is launched.
“We are enormously proud of the work being done every day by our hard working catering teams to provide our staff, patients and visitors with good quality, healthy, varied and tasty meals. It’s a major logistical operation, dealing with 50 deliveries a week, preparing and cooking thousands of meals, maintaining sufficient supplies and devising menus that are nutritious and cater for a wide range of dietary, religious and ethical needs.
“The chair and I were very pleased to be able to showcase our team’s work and I think that our visitors were very impressed by what they saw.
“Our catering systems are already in line with the proposals outlined in the Hospital Food Review — providing nutritious meals to aid a faster recovery, maintaining stringent food safety measures and paying heed to the environmental impact of our food chain.
“We were also delighted to have the opportunity to demonstrate how we have used additional capital investment monies to create a new x-ray facility in the Minor Injuries Unit.
“Colleagues have told me this will be a real game changer for them. It’ll be a major aid in streamlining some patients away from ED, preventing over- crowding there and also helping us see and treat patients more quickly.
“At the moment staff have had to take patients on a lengthy detour through the hospital site to access the main x-ray suite and this all takes time. Being able to x-ray up to 100 patients each day in the MIU also means we’re able to limit footfall through the hospital to keep everyone safe and distanced,” she added.
