One-third of Americans admitted to hospital are malnourished
Next we headed to a session on the nutritional status of people going into hospital in the US, where we heard some scary statistics:
- One third of Americans that are admitted to hospital are malnourished, and two-thirds experience a decline in nutritional status by the time they leave.
- One in five Medicare patients is re-admitted to hospital within 30 days of being discharged.
To explore how better education and nutritional interventions can help, Abbott Nutrition is teaming up with Advocate Health Care to conduct a study with 3,000 patients in four hospitals (two pilots, two controls).
Patients in the pilot hospitals will be screened, and if appropriate, given oral nutritional supplements, nutritional education, discharge nutrition care plans, and post-discharge reminder calls, to see if this impacts re-admission rates.