The National Referral Hospital (NRH) in Honiara will no longer feeds guardians that look after any sick patient being admitted, as part of efforts to improve nutrition, counter malnutrition on patients and save costs.
This new system will come into effect on Friday the 1st of July next month, the Hospital’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr. Steve Aumanu announced on Tuesday during a press conference.
NRH has the normal practise of feeding both the inpatients and one of his or her caretaker at the hospital, who spent time looking after the sick during their period of admission.
Unfortunately this practise will come to and end as of next week Friday , thus relatives who look after their sick patient at NRH will have to rely on leftover food from the plate of the patients or feed their appetite somewhere else.
This new system will apply to Honiara based patients while for provincial referral inpatients, food will still be provided for both patients and a guardian,” he asserted.
Dr Aumanu stressed that NRH management takes this new steps as a way forward to address better quality of expenditure, increased efficiency savings, and improved nutrition for NRH inpatients.
“The Ministry of Health Executive has approved this measure,” CEO reiterated.
Malnutrition in general is very common in hospitalized patients, as several studies done in hospitals have shown that about 30% to 50% of inpatients are malnourished upon admission or during admission. Malnutrition in hospitalised patients can be reduced through the use of food as treatment, Mr Aumanu explained.
He added feeding inpatients improve or maintain individual (patient) nutritional requirements, quick or fast recovery from illness and reduce the length and cost of stay in hospital.
Aumanu said NRH ration has increased over the years whilst there were no significant changes to patient admissions as well as better quality and improved nutrition.
“Budget for ration has doubled between 2011 and 2015, from SBD$1.5 to SBD$3 million and the expenditure has gone over budget every year for rations reaching a peak of $3.6 million in 2013, however, while total patient admission increased in 2015 only, the overall trend from 2011 to 2014 was rather stable,” the CEO elaborated.
Therefore the question being asked is: 1. who else is eating the food? 2. Are the food prices escalated? 3. Is the NRH Kitchens managing the food deliveries well? 4. Is there better quality and improved nutrition? CEO revealed some key questions.
These are questions being analysed by the NRH Management and have come up with ways to improve the quality of our expenditure in this issue, Aumanu pointed out.
Finally, he said public must respect and comply with the changes imposed as it is fundamental for the betterment of the care of patients and the running of our only National Referral Hospital.
“I call on all good citizens of Solomon Islands to cooperate with us, with understanding on this transition process, as NRH strives to improve and provide a high quality of patient-care and targeting resources to benefit health outcomes,” the CEO concluded.
By AATAI JOHN