The economics of malnutrition

Despite extensive information on the adverse physical and psychological consequences of malnutrition, there is little information on its economic consequences. International studies suggest that disease-related malnutrition increases hospital costs by 30-70%. In the United Kingdom the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) was used as the basis for identifying the prevalence of malnutrition in various care settings. Malnutrition increased both the frequency of admissions and length of stay in hospitals, as well as the frequency of visits to a general practitioner and hospital outpatient visits, and residency in care homes. After assigning nationally representative costs to the utilization of these services, the public expenditure on disease-related malnutrition in the UK in 2003 was estimated to be more than GBP 7.3 billion. The large cost of disease-related malnutrition means that small fractional cost savings from intervention can result in substantial absolute cost savings. A summary of nutritional intervention studies with cost analyses (including meta-analyses) and cost-effectiveness analyses are presented, and some of the clinical and ethical implications discussed.