The new three-year contract, which began in July, remains a “cook-freeze” agreement, meaning it consists of a combination of meals produced by Sodexo’s Tillery Valley prepared meals provider and on-site produced general menu products.
There is also an extensive diet menu range produced in-house, which caters for 14 different special diet categories, according to a Sodexo statement.
Patient meals are prepared in a central production kitchen and then transported to wards where trust staff served them to patients.
Sodexo will be bringing in some new initiatives, such as the introduction of a ward stores assistant to help manage issues such as waste. There will also be two snacks per patient per day and volunteer feeders will be introduced at meal times.
The company will also be introducing an electronic same-day patient meal ordering system.
The hospital opened in 1984 and is operated as an NHS Foundation Trust, serving north Derbyshire.