Turning Science into Caring : The Value of Oral Nutritional Supplements in Reducing Hospital Stay and Expenses

July 6, 2014

Turning Science into Caring : The Value of Oral Nutritional Supplements in Reducing Hospital Stay and Expenses

Abbott, the global healthcare company devoted to improving life through the development of products and technologies that span the breadth of healthcare continue the studies and shares us the latest insights for more healthcare to our family and loveones.

DR. MARIANNA SY-QUIA SIOSON, MD, DPBCN, MSCN

Dr. Nina Sioson is a medical nutrition physician practicing mainly at The Medical City Hospital in Metro Manila. She is currently the head of the Section of Nutrition of the Department of Medicine, as well as head of the Weight Management Program of the Center for Wellness and Aesthetics of her hospital. She is also an active member of its Nutrition Management Services Team. Her sociocivic advocacy involves offering nutrition counseling services to cancer patients at the Carewell Cancer Community, an NGO providing support systems for free to cancer patients and their families.

She is the current President of the Philippine Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition or PhilSPEN.

Last June 28, 2014, Dr. Sioson shared to us about one of the most important matter for all of us - Nutrition. She also explained about Malnutrition Syndrome - undernutrition, obesity, macronutrient deficiency, micronutrient defienciency and metabolic syndrome.

According to Dr. Sioson, "the body has higher nutritional needs during sickness, injury and surgery." Undernutrition is not just being underweight. Dr. Sioson said that more nutrients are needed to recover, build strenght and energy and return to normal life. But patients lose appetite during sickness and nutrient absorption may be impaired.

Nutrition care includes treatment of "underlying causes." During the talks of Dr. Sioson, address underlying causes of undernutrition are disease, polypharmacy, oral or gastrointestinal symptoms and limited accress to adequate food.

Here is recommended nutrition therapy:

For our loveones who needs to be treated and to be back on their energy, we can help them to increase food intake, serve them palatable appetizing meals and give them high energy snacks. Their bodies need more nutrients during sickness, injury or surgery to be healed and recover.

Oral nutrition supplements can reduce length of hospital stay and costs.

DR. JOSE RODOLFO V. DIMAANO, JR., MD, Medical Director of Abbott Nutrition Philippines

Dr. Jose Rodolfo V. Dimaano, the Medical Director of Abbott Nutrition Philippines, part of the team that implemented the food fortification program under the Early Childhood Development Project of the Department of Health in order to address micronutrient deficiencies in children.

Abbott's in the now is on an advocacy campaign to increase awareness on the importance of nutrition to patient outcomes by identifying risk for undernutrition to trigger early intervention.

Dr. Dimaano asked the bloggers who participated in the #AbbotEnsureBlogcon how to interpret under nutrition risk. The bloggers conference was held June 28, F1 Hotel, Global City, Taguig.

A new health economics outcomes study, conducted by leading health economists and supported by Abbott, found that oral nutritional supplements provided to patients during hospitalization are associated with significant reductions in length of stay and hospitalization cost. Additionally, the 30-day readmission risk was significantly reduced for patients with at least one known subsequent readmission.

Here's the detailed study for Oral Nutritional Supplements.

New Study Demonstrates Oral Nutritional Supplements Are Associated With Significant Reductions in Length of Hospital Stay and Cost

More than one million adult hospital cases analyzed in study.

Published in the American Journal of Managed Care, (Feb 2013) the study provides insights into the economic benefits of prescribing oral nutritional supplements to adult patients in the hospital setting.

The retrospective analysis utilized information from more than one million adult inpatient cases found in the 2000-2010 Premier Research Database maintained by the Premier healthcare alliance —representing a total of 44 million hospital episodes from across the United States or approximately 20 percent of all inpatient admissions in the U.S.

Benefits associated with patients provided oral nutrition supplements during hospitalization included 21% or 2.3 days reduction in length of stay and 21.6% or $4,734, reduction in patient hospitalization cost.

Additionally, there was a 6.7% reduction in the probability of a 30-day readmission in patients who had at least one known subsequent readmission and were provided oral nutrition supplements during the previous hospitalization.

″Impaired nutritional status, especially in patients recovering from serious illnesses or surgery, can result in longer hospital stays; an increase in complication rates, higher readmission rates, and associated health care costs, ″ says Dr. Marianna Sioson, president of the Philippine Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition. ″Research shows that using oral nutritional supplements can help reduce their length of stay and associated hospital costs. This is indeed good news for the 4 out of 10 hospitalized Filipino patients who are nutritionally at-risk since most of them shoulder their hospital expenses out of their own pockets.”

In the study, investigators were able to determine differences in length of stay and costs by comparing hospital stays where oral nutritional supplements were prescribed to stays of similar conditions where oral nutritional supplements weren’t prescribed.

″In an increasingly cost-pressured environment, health economics assessments can more comprehensively determine a therapy’s true value. Our results point to the tangible benefits of inpatient oral nutritional supplements on health outcomes and cost of care, factors that impact a hospital’s bottom line,” said study co-author, Darius Lakdawalla PhD, Quintiles Chair in Pharmaceutical Development and Regulatory Innovation, USC School of Pharmacy, and Sol Price School of Public Policy, and Director of Research, Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, University of Southern California

″Because oral nutrition supplements are formulated to provide advanced nutrition and calories for compromised patients and are relatively inexpensive to provide, the sizeable savings they generate make supplementation a cost-effective therapy,″ said study co-author, Tomas Philipson PhD, Daniel Levin Chair of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

The ″Impact of Oral Nutritional Supplementation on Hospital Outcomes" study is a retrospective data analysis on the effect of oral nutritional supplements on hospital economic outcomes. The study compared hospital stays where oral nutritional supplements were provided with similar hospital stays that did not provide oral nutritional supplements. The difference between length of hospital stay and cost of treatment (including supplies, labor, depreciation of equipment, etc.) were measured.

The probability of 30-day hospital readmission also was calculated.

The retrospective analysis utilized information from more than one million adult inpatient cases found in the Premier Research Database from 2000 – 2010, maintained by the Premier healthcare alliance – representing a total of 44 million hospital episodes from across the United States or approximately 20 percent of all inpatient admissions in the United States. The full sample consisted of adults 18 years and older and focused on oral feeding interventions only. The matched sample ultimately included: 1,160,088 total episodes (oral nutritional supplements episodes N= 580,044 and non-oral nutritional supplements episodes N=580,044), where propensity score matching and instrumental variables were used to address potential bias due to non-random selection.