Impact of a Nutrition-Focused Quality Improvement Intervention on Hospital Length of Stay

Background: Despite its high prevalence, malnutrition in hospitalized patients often goes unrecognized and undertreated. Local Problem: A hospital system sought to improve nutrition care by implementing a quality improvement initiative. Nurses screened patients upon admission using the Malnutrition Screening Tool and initiated oral nutrition supplements for patients at risk. Methods: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 20 697 adult patients to determine whether early initiation of nutrition therapy had reduced hospital length of stay and 30-day readmission rates. Results: We found the average time from hospital admission to oral nutrition supplement initiation was reduced by 20 hours (20.8%) after the quality improvement initiative was introduced (P
Source: Journal of Nursing Care Quality - Category: Nursing Tags: Articles Source Type: research