Characteristics of Hospital Stays Involving Malnutrition (eg. postsurgical nonabsorption)

open access: Characteristics of Hospital Stays Involving Malnutrition

  The NIS includes obstetrics and gynecology, otolaryngology, orthopedic, cancer, pediatric, public, and academic medical hospitals.

Highlights

• In 2013, there were nearly 2 million hospital inpatient stays involving malnutrition. The most common type was protein-calorie malnutrition (63.9 percent of all malnutrition stays), accounting for 4.5 percent of all inpatient stays and 9.1 percent of aggregate costs (nonmaternal and nonneonatal only).



• Other malnutrition-related stays were for weight loss or failure to thrive (21.6 percent of all malnutrition stays), cachexia (8.3 percent), underweight (4.4 percent), postsurgical nonabsorption (1.7 percent), and nutritional neglect (0.1 percent).



• Patients with malnutrition tended to be older (especially 85 years or older), black, and from low income and rural areas.



• Compared with other types of malnutrition, in-hospital mortality was higher for stays with cachexia (11.7 percent died in the hospital) and protein-calorie malnutrition (8.4 percent)—4 to 5 times the in-hospital death rate of all nonmaternal, nonneonatal stays (2.4 percent).



• Average hospital costs were higher for stays involving protein-calorie malnutrition ($25,200) and postsurgical nonabsorption ($23,000) than for other malnutrition stays.



• Principal diagnoses varied by type of malnutrition: medical, surgical, or device complications were common for postsurgical nonabsorption; injuries and conditions due to external causes were common for nutritional neglect. Septicemia was common among all types of malnutrition.