Challenges within healthcare catering

Catering within the healthcare industry has many challenges within healthcare catering that can affect the quality of care that people receive, from hospitals and healthcare facilities like care homes and residential care, to schools and such.

Obstacles

There are obvious obstacles with healthcare catering, such as portion size and distribution. For example, men tend to eat more than women. Hurdles such as menu boredom, people living or staying within these facilities become tired and dissatisfied. Therefore may reduce what they eat at meal times. Which can lead to nutritional issues and a decline in their well-being.

Staff serving food find it difficult to meet the expectations of the patients or residents. Not everyone can be given a leg piece of chicken. For example, this can cause problems with the level of satisfaction. Chefs and caterers can find it difficult to ensure the level of nutrition and taste are of the same standard. Foods that are often considered healthy, like porridge, are not liked by everyone and can cause some disruption. Achieving this balance is difficult and can lead to waste and other problems.

• A large number of people are to be fed in a limited time
• Arranging adequate facilities and managing them is a challenge. Like the space of the dining hall, seating arrangements, and food and water service.
• Chefs have to work within tight budgets and yet have to meet the high expectations of consumers.

How to maintain standards

Quantity control and portion control are very important. A good quality standard should have essential characteristics that indicate the quality of a product. Quality control makes it possible to serve as a consistent standard. Employee evaluation, taste panel, scoring customer reactions, and other menus can be used to evaluate quality.

Good purchases and finding the right product to suit the needs can do much to raise and maintain quality standards. Proper forecasting of quantities needed in production and controlling portion size are two essentials of good quality controls. Portion size varies according to food, type of meal and the person eating, cost of the food, and appearance. Adults, teenagers, and small children consume different quantities and portion sizes vary from them. Portion size can vary between genders. Men eat more than women, and an individual doing hard work eats more than others doing sedentary tasks.

Other challenges within healthcare catering are things like balancing costs through portion size. Giving liberal quantities of less costly foods and smaller ones of the more expensive foods. This is affected by the portion size and shape of the dish. Decoration, the width of the rim, dish colour and food arrangement. Things may not even be considered in the healthcare setting but can make a difference in the perception of quality. We have all been to fancy restaurants that serve tiny portions on massive plates. Yet we regard this as fancy, fine dining and high quality. The perception we have extends to other culinary settings like those within a care home or hospital.

Solutions

So, how can healthcare settings ensure the standards are kept at a decent level and patients are happy? Providing excellent nutrition while maintaining taste is crucial in healthcare. The importance of this alongside standard medicine is key. Great nutritional care and medical care go hand in hand. After all, no one wants to be dished up poor quality food in their later years or while in residential care.

Contact Cucumber Recruitment to find out about what we are doing to overcome these challenges within healthcare catering, and find out more about our available roles.