NPSA announces continued improvement in hospital food and cleanliness

The standard of NHS hospital food and cleaning continues to show steady improvement, according to new figures announced today by the National Patient Safety Agency.

The Agency has published the Patient Environment Action Team (PEAT) data for all Trust for 2007 which incorporated the National Specifications for Cleanliness scores.  This year scores were judged using a tougher weighing system that considered a 12 month audit of cleanliness based on infection control risk.

PEATs were established in 2000 to assess NHS hospitals. Under the programme, every inpatient NHS healthcare facility in England with more than ten beds is assessed annually and given a rating of excellent, good, acceptable, poor or unacceptable. The teams consist of NHS staff, including nurses, matrons, doctors, catering and domestic service managers, executive and non-executive directors, dieticians and estates directors. They also include patients, patient representatives and members of the public.

Standards of cleanliness and food are inspected, with both areas showing sustained progress this year. Trusts scored “acceptable” or above in 99.5 per cent of cases for Hospital food and in 98 per cent of cases for the Patient environment (encompassing cleanliness).

Secretary of State for Health Alan Johnson said:

"Healthcare staff, patients and their carers quite rightly expect hospitals to be kept clean, and these results show that we are continuing to improve. However we will carry on working to support the NHS in raising standards.  Hospital cleanliness and food as well as the dignity of patient all contribute to the patient experience and the quality of the patient environment must remain high on the agenda."

Martin Fletcher, Chief Executive of the NPSA said:

“We’re reassured with this year’s improved PEAT scores – hospital food and cleanliness go right to the heart of patients’ confidence in their healthcare. It is also valuable that most trusts included a patient representative on their PEAT assessment team.

“There’s still work to be done, but these data will help us take forward our work in this area - delivering practical solutions to problems with food delivery and cleanliness and emphasising how important nutrition is to recovery and health.”

“In 2008 to further improve the PEAT data, we are introducing a section for infection control, compiled in collaboration the Infection Control Nurses Association (ICNA) and the NPSA’s cleanyourhands team.  We are also revising the food section to give greater emphasis and guidance to protected mealtimes and nutritional care and we have worked with the Healthcare Commission to ensure that PEAT can be used as an evidence base for the core standards which we are confident will reduce reporting burdens on trusts whilst strengthening the value of PEAT.”

Over the last year specific pieces of work have been undertaken by the NPSA in this field including work reviewing protected mealtimes, promoting awareness of nutritional screening on admission, reviewing implementation of the protected mealtimes initiative, introducing a standard colour coding system for cleaning materials and contributing to the national specifications for cleaning.

The national PEAT scores can be found at http://www.npsa.nhs.uk/health/resources/peat

Patient Environment

(Figures rounded to one decimal place)

 Hospital Food

(Figures rounded to one decimal place)

Notes for editors:

1.       Media enquiries to Nick Rigg in the NPSA Communications Department on 020 7927 9362 or nick.rigg@npsa.nhs.uk.

2.       The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) helps the NHS learn from its mistakes so that it can improve patient safety. It does this by collecting reports on errors and other things that go wrong in healthcare so that it can recognise national trends and introduce practical ways of preventing problems. It does not investigate individual cases or complaints, but it does listen to public concerns and uses what is said to improve safety.

3.       The revised weighting system uses the National Specifications for Cleanliness (NSC) score which each Trust is required to submit annually. This score is derived following a 12 month audit of cleanliness with the auditing process determined according to identified infection control risk so that a very high or high risk area will be audited far more frequently than moderate or low risk areas. This brings into the PEAT process a 12-month element of cleanliness standards. To achieve high scores through the NSC process means a hospital must retain the focus on cleanliness 365 days a year, thus a good or excellent PEAT rating will demonstrate that cleanliness is high on the Trust’s agenda at all times. Any hospital failing to provide a NSC score will have their PEAT rating reduced by one rank (e.g. from Good to Acceptable).