Enhancing nutrition care in the hospital could help reduce both 30-day readmission rates and length of hospital stays, according to a study published in the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition.
The study included 1,200 adults at risk of malnutrition during their stay. Researchers studied the impact of both a basic and an enhanced nutrition care program at four Downers Grove, Ill.-based Advocate Health Care hospitals.
Both programs required care teams to conduct patient malnutrition risk screenings and provide treatment for malnourished or at-risk patients. The enhanced program included more immediate treatment upon being admitted to the hospital and follow-up calls to ensure the nutrition treatment continued post-discharge.
Both nutrition programs helped reduce the risk of patient readmissions by 27 percent and also shortened the risk of a patient's length of stay from 7.2 days to 5.4 days.
"Incorporating a simple nutrition care program at hospitals can dramatically accelerate patients' recovery times, and if adopted by providers nationwide, could have tremendous benefits for the healthcare system at-large," said Krishnan Sriram, MD, tele-intensivist at Advocate Health Care and lead author of the study.
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