Hospital will only provide bread rolls on request to reduce waste (From Bury Times)

Hospital will only provide bread rolls on request to reduce waste

11:12am Thursday 3rd November 2011 in News

HEALTH bosses have been accused of taking “food out of the mouths” of Fairfield Hospital patients after it was disclosed they will no longer be given bread rolls automatically with their meals.

Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust say patients on all wards will be able to ask for bread but it will not be routinely handed out.

The move is being made in a bid to reduce the amount of food being thrown away and not to cut costs, health chiefs have claimed.

The trust, which also runs Hospitals in Crumpsall, Oldham and Rochdale, said hundreds of bread rolls were being thrown away every year.

But the decision has angered and infuriated health campaigner Victor Hagan who last week organised a demonstration outside Fairfield Hospital to protest over cuts to services.

Mr Hagan, of Kingfisher Drive, Chesham Fold, said: “The fact is that many patients, particularly the elderly, will be too proud to ask for these rolls on request. The hospital is taking food out of their mouths. I think the move is awful, just disgusting.

“Even if bread rolls are left, there is no reason why they should just be thrown away. They could be given to those who genuinely need food,” added Mr Hagan, of Kingfisher Drive, Chesham Fold.

A trust spokesman said: “We have not discontinued the provision of bread rolls at patients’ meal times. We provide over 1.7 million meals per year at our hospitals and need to keep a watchful eye on any unnecessary food wastage, which was the case when bread rolls were routinely supplied. Bread rolls continue to be supplied on request by the wards.”

The trust is trying to save £45m this year which has included cutting around 1,000 jobs from across the four hospitals.

Staff were told in February this year that around 10 per cent of the workforce could be lost.

In May this year, the trust announced it was increasing the cost of staff parking across its sites from £14 a month to £20, a rise of 43 per cent.

• Fairfield Hospital’s 20-bed Ward 18 is scheduled to be closed by the end of the year. The news follows the earlier decision to withdraw the hospital’s maternity services from next March and the loss of overnight children’s services.

Steve Taylor, divisional director for medicine and community services at The Pennine Acute Trust, said: “Following a full review of our bed usage across our hospitals and particularly patient flow into the Royal Oldham and Fairfield General Hospitals, we are now in a position where can reduce a small number of beds at Fairfield which are not being used to full capacity.

“We are working closely with our clinical and nursing staff to progress this to meet the needs of patients.”