Clinical and Economic Value of Nutrition in Healthcare: A Nurse's Perspective

In the US healthcare system, malnutrition is a common condition, yet it remains underreported and underdiagnosed. The financial costs of disease-associated malnutrition are substantial; hospital-acquired conditions, readmissions, and prolonged lengths of stay are reported to cost as much as $150 billion per year. By contrast, nutrition-focused quality improvement programs for inpatients can help reduce the negative impact of disease-associated malnutrition. Such programs include systematic screening for malnutrition risk on admission, timely malnutrition diagnoses, and prompt nutrition interventions, which have been shown to lower rates of hospital-acquired infections, shorten lengths of stay, reduce readmissions, and lessen costs of care. Nurses are ideally positioned to play critical roles in nutrition-related care-screening for malnutrition on admission, monitoring for and addressing conditions that impede nutrition intake, and ensuring that prescribed nutrition interventions are delivered and administered or consumed. Such nursing support of multidisciplinary nutrition care contributes to better patient outcomes at lower costs.