Lack of communication leaves some hospital cafeterias uninspected

CHICAGO — If you have to go to the hospital, you most likely trust the doctors and staff to make you feel better.

But as CBS 2’s Pam Zekman reports, food served at some hospital cafeterias could be making you sick.

After looking through inspection reports for 12 Chicago hospitals, the 2 Investigators found critical food violations. Even worse, they uncovered a bureaucratic problem that left some hospital kitchens with no oversight at all.

The city thought state government was inspecting the kitchens, while the state thought the city was conducting the inspections.

In 2014, the kitchen at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital had a critical violation for a broken dishwasher that was not sanitizing dishes and another violation for chicken stored at dangerous temperatures.

“You would think they would be more interested in the well-being of the patients,” said Anthony Teague, a former patient at Stroger Hospital.

In 2014, Resurrection Hospital also had multiple critical food-temperature violations. This forced the hospital to throw out multiple food items, including lettuce, eggs, cheese sauce, Italian sausages and burgers.

“Food that is not stored at the proper temperature is likely to grow bacteria, which could make people sick,” says Gerrin Cheek Butler, director of food protection for the Chicago Health Department.

Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center and Mount Sinai Hospital both failed inspections in 2014.  At Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the visitor cafeteria failed two inspections in 2014 for the presence of fruit flies and for food-temperature issues. That cafeteria is now closed for remodeling.

“It is a critical violation for any pest to be in a food establishment because pests carry diseases,” Butler says.

These are just the violations the 2 Investigators uncovered by analyzing public inspection records. There could be many more hospitals with problems because some hospital kitchens that prepare food for patients only have not been inspected for years.

The 2 Investigators were told by state officials that the Chicago Health Department was inspecting those kitchens. But the Chicago Health Department was under the impression that the Illinois Department of Health was doing the inspections.

“There was a miscommunication,” Butler says.