Undernutrition is associated with increased financial losses in hospitals

Undernutrition is associated with increased hospital costs. Whether these increased costs are totally compensated by third payer systems has not been assessed. We aimed to assess the differences between actual and reimbursed hospital costs according to presence/absence of nutritional risk, defined by a Nutritional risk screening-2002 (NRS-2002) score ≥3.

Retrospective study. Administrative data for years 2013 and 2014 of the department of internal medicine of the Lausanne university hospital. The data included total and specific costs (i.e. clinical biology, treatments, pathology). Reimbursed costs were based on the Swiss Diagnosis Related Group (DRG) system.

2200 admissions with NRS-2002 data were included (mean age 76 years, 53.9% women), 1398 (63.6%) of which were considered nutritionally 'at-risk'. After multivariate adjustment, patients nutritionally 'at-risk' had higher costs (multivariate-adjusted difference ± standard error: 34,206 ± 1246 vs. 22,214 ± 1666 CHF, p < 0.001) and higher reimbursements (26,376 ± 1105 vs. 17,783 ± 1477 CHF, p < 0.001). Still, the latter failed to cover the costs, leading to a deficit between costs and reimbursements of 7831 ± 660 CHF in patients 'at-risk' vs. 4431 ± 881 in patients 'not at-risk' (p < 0.003). Being nutritionally 'at-risk' also led to a lower likelihood of complete coverage of costs: multivariate-adjusted odds ratio and 95% confidence interval 0.77 (0.62-0.97). Patients 'at-risk' had lower percentage of total costs in medical interventions, food, imaging and "other", but the absolute differences were less than 2%.

Hospital costs of patients nutritionally 'at-risk' are less well reimbursed than of patients 'not at-risk'. Better reporting of undernutrition in medical records and better reimbursement of undernourished patients is needed.