Hospitals and Healthcare
We have experience in producing Catering briefs and bespoke design solutions for large and small facilities from Central Production Units through to Ward Kitchens.
KEG Catering provides a range of catering consultancy and advisory services to the NHS, private hospitals, care homes and healthcare businesses.
We have an in-depth knowledge of meal service systems for Hospitals and the Healthcare markets. We pride ourselves on providing our clients with specific, independent and objective advice.
We can help you with the following:
- Catering reviews
- Feasibility studies and option appraisals
- Business Cases
- Development of a catering brief
- Space planning and schedules
- Design development of catering facilities
- Designs for CPU’s & RDU’s
- Implementation of new meal service systems
- Contract Management
- Due Diligences and operational monitoring
- Food safety compliance
- Risk Assessments
Knowledge and Expereince
- Replacement of PEAT with PLACE
- Care Quality Commission Principles and Standards
- ERIC Reporting
- Commissioning for Quality and Innovation CQUIN
- Food for Life
- Operation Hospital Food – James Martin
- Association with members of the British Dietetics Association BDA
Members of the Institute of Hospitality and Hospital Caterers Association.
To promote, develop and improve the standards of catering in healthcare
Hospitality Network is a thought leadership and ideas exchange organisation.
Case Studies
Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Background
The Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust operates 2 major hospitals at Worthing and Chichester.
- St Richards Hospital, Chichester provided a cook-chill service from a Central Production Unit, operating 5 days a week.
- Worthing hospital offered a bulk meal service cooked on-site, from an outdated kitchen. This service operated 7 days a week and had high labour costs.
The two sites not only operated different meal service delivery systems but the quality of the end product varied considerably.
The objective was to align the two hospitals in terms of providing a high-quality food and beverage provision that both hospitals could adhere to. The choice for The Trust was whether to refurbish the catering facilities at Worthing Hospital or consolidate the meal service provision for both Worthing and Chichester sites, converting Chichester into a CPU and Worthing into a Receiving and Distribution Unit (RDU). Alternatively, the supply of meals could have been outsourced to an external provider.
Brief
The Trust’s objective was to provide a food and beverage service that assisted patient recovery through nutrition and well-being. An option appraisal was carried out resulting in the decision to implement an ‘a La carte’ menu with meals being produced from a cook freeze CPU at St Richards Hospital, Chichester. The kitchens at Worthing General Hospital were then to be repurposed into an RDU, where meals would be regenerated centrally before being transferred to ward level for service.
Our Approach
KEG Catering Consultancy Limited was appointed to redesign the production kitchen at St Richard’s Hospital. The new CPU would support the production of the cook freeze meal service delivery system. Meals would then be delivered to a new RDU at Worthing General Hospital.
Concept designs were produced taking into account of the building and MEP constraints, thereby avoiding non-essential base build costs. Design development considerations included flow diagrams demonstrating the mitigation of risks associated with cross-contamination.
Our experience and knowledge of the complexity of meal service systems in the healthcare industry enabled us to design a state of the art facility that supports a centre of excellence in terms of hospital food provision.
Challenges
Our major challenges were the base build constraints and the MEP infrastructure. In order to meet future sustainability targets, we produced equipment specifications that reduced ongoing lifecycle costs and carbon emissions.
The catering services have remained an in-house service, therefore, the staff have had to adapt to completely different ways of working including familiarising themselves
with new catering equipment technologies and operational systems. By designing the kitchens using a logical formula the staff adapted well to their new environment and achieved production levels of 5,000 meals in the first 10 hours of mobilisation.
Outcomes
The CPU at St Richard’s Hospital has been identified as a centre of excellence and the designs have been used as a blueprint for the development of the Independent NHS review 2020. More importantly, the patient satisfaction rates have soared and catering at the Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been identified as a key service for patient recovery as opposed to a support service.