Table 4.

Topics to include in making a business case for nutrition support team (especially nutrition nurse specialist)

Quality benefits

Government/Trust strategy

Care Quality Commission—annual health check (complying with NICE)

Health and Social Care Act 2008

National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death201028

Patient Environment Action Teams assessment

Foundation status

Stakeholders (eg, surgery, oncology, haematology and critical care)

Options pros/cons, SWOT analysis. Do nothing—full team

Costings (tangible and intangible)

Time scale

Monitoring

Audits

NICE, National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence; SWOT, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.