Exploring hospital patients' satisfaction with cook‐chill foodservice systems: a preliminary study using a validated questionnaire

Decline in nutritional status during hospitalisation highlights the importance of achieving high-quality foodservice. This research aimed to explore patient satisfaction with hospital foodservices from on-site and off-site cook-chill production systems. Two cross-sectional surveys of hospital inpatients were conducted in an acute medical and a subacute rehabilitation ward before and after a change to off-site cook-chill production. The survey used a validated instrument (Acute Care Hospital Foodservice Patient Satisfaction Questionnaire). Sixty-six patients in 2006 and 51 patients in 2007 recorded unchanged results across factors of food quality, staffing service quality, meal service quality and physical environment quality. Satisfaction with foodservice was rated ‘good’ or ‘very good’ by the majority of patients in both surveys. The research instrument was able to deconstruct various issues relating to patients' satisfaction and six individual items correlated with overall satisfaction with foodservice. To maximise patient satisfaction, further research into these, and additional dimensions of foodservice quality is needed to determine how improvements may be achieved.