Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine how diagnosing and coding of malnutrition in an internal medicine ward setting influences potential hospital reimbursement. Methods: Patients admitted to the internal medicine ward of Centro Hospitalar do Médio Ave between April 24 and May 22, 2018 were screened by Nutritional Risk Screening 2002, and patients classified as at “risk for malnutrition” were assessed by the Patient-Generated Subjective Global Assessment (PG-SGA). For each patient, medical coders simulated coding, taking into account the malnutrition diagnosis by PG-SGA, and compared it with the real coding as retrieved from the medical records. For the coding, the Diagnosis-Related Group and Severity of Illness were determined, allowing the calculation of hospitalization cost (HC) according to Portuguese Ministerial Directive number 207/2017. The increase of HC in this subsample was extrapolated to the number of patients admitted during 2018, to obtain the estimated unreported annual HC. Results: Of the 71% (92/129) participants having malnutrition risk according to Nutritional Risk Screening 2002, 86% were malnourished. Including malnutrition diagnosis in the coding of malnourished patients increased the level of Severity of Illness in 39% of cases and increased HC for this subsample, resulting in €52 000. Extrapolating for the annual HC, total HC reached €1.3 million. Conclusions: Identifying malnourished patients and including this highly prevalent diagnosis in medical records allows malnutrition coding and consequent increase of HC. This can improve the potential hospital reimbursement, which could contribute to the quality of patient care and economic sustainability of hospitals.
Rationale: Diagnosis of sarcopenia in older adults is essential for early treatment in clinical practice. Bio-electrical impedance analysis (BIA) may be a valid means to assess appendicular lean mass (ALM) in older adults, but limited evidence is available. Therefore, we aim to evaluate the validity of BIA to assess ALM in older adults.Methods: In 215 community dwelling older adults (age ≥ 55 years), ALM was measured by BIA (Tanita MC-780; 8-points) and compared with dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA, Hologic Discovery A) as reference. Validity for assessing absolute values of ALM was evaluated by: 1) bias (mean difference), 2) percentage of accurate predictions (within 5% of DXA values), 3) individual error (root mean squared error (RMSE), mean absolute deviation), 4) limits of agreement (Bland-Altman analysis). For diagnosis of low ALM, the lowest quintile of ALM by DXA was used (below 21.4 kg for males and 15.4 for females). Sensitivity and specificity of detecting low ALM by BIA were assessed.Results: Mean age of the subjects was 71.9 ± 6.4, with a BMI of 25.8 ± 4.2 kg/m2, and 70% were females. BIA slightly underestimated ALM compared to DXA with a mean bias of -0.6 ± 0.2 kg. The percentage accurate predictions was 54% with RMSE 1.6 kg and limits of agreements −3.0 to +1.8 kg. Sensitivity was 79%, indicating that 79% of subjects with low ALM according to DXA also had low ALM with the BIA. Specificity was 90%, indicating that 90% of subjects with ‘no low’ ALM according to DXA also had ‘no low’ ALM with the BIA.Conclusions: This comparison showed a poor validity of BIA to assess absolute values of ALM, but a reasonable sensitivity and specificity to diagnose a low level of ALM in community-dwelling older adults in clinical practice.Disclosure of interest: None declared.
