Hospital food fight

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Apart from sandwiches and salads very little food is made in many of Ontario’s hospitals and several, including Hamilton Health Sciences are looking to shut down their kitchens and instead ship in food from a private company. That decision has many members of the health care workers union upset.

Both the members of the Hamilton health sciences and CUPE 7800 which represents about 4 000 health care workers, agree that food in the group’s hospitals are way below average. Patient satisfaction is at 50% when it comes to food and they acknowledge that they need to improve on getting in more local foods and to be more culturally and medically sensitive.

They are looking at getting food from an private company that would get food from the golden horseshoe but at a rally today, members of CUPE believe that they should be looking to their backyards for food and not a massive company. Hamilton Health Sciences says they have patients best interests at heart and are not doing this to save money.

Redoing the kitchen in house would cost about 20million and redoing the current place where they get food would run about 10million. They hope to get the deal done by the end of the month.