Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service provides services to around 250,000 individuals through 9 hospitals, 11 primary care facilities, and 9 community health centres. 

The problem: 

Oral nutrition supplements, often provided in plastic bottles, are commonly prescribed to patients to help meet their nutritional needs. However, for a variety of reasons, some patients do not consume their supplements. Previously, without disinfection processes in place, unconsumed supplements were thrown out. However, at a time of growing food insecurity, throwing out good supplements was identified as a wasteful practice. This initiated a conversation around sustainable supplement practices. 

Goals:

• Eliminate Oral Nutrition Supplement Waste

The process:

Infection control: To determine the suitability of re-serving oral nutritional supplements, the infection control team within the hospital was consulted. Infection control provided support and guidance to develop a process to safely redistribute supplements.

Infection control recommended a strict process of disinfection and sanitisation to minimise the risk of infection and disease. All nutritional supplements were cleaned using disinfectant wipes and visually assessed to ensure there was no damage to the bottles. This allowed bottles to be safely redistributed to other patients. 

Food safety: Supplements are made from long life milk and do not need to be refrigerated and therefore there were no food safety concerns.

Guidelines and training: Guidelines were developed and approved by the infection control team. Dietetic Assistants, who collect the unused supplements from patient wards, were trained and supported to follow the guidelines and safely sanitise the oral nutritional supplements. 

The outcome:

During the pilot period, 2664 plastic supplement bottles were reused and diverted from landfill. Calculations show that this saved around AUD$4400 for the hospital.

Due to good engagement and support from the infection control team, this initiative was developed and implemented without challenges. 

Next steps: 

The infection control team highlighted further opportunities for this process to be expanded within the hospital kitchen. It was identified that other pre-packaged items such as juices could be reviewed and a similar process put in place. Further work to identify all potential foodservice items and their current wastage levels needs to be completed before re-engaging the infection control team.

The full case study is available to all GGHH members via GGHH Connect.

Congratulations Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service! Thank you for your sustainable healthcare leadership!

(July 2022)