The American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the American Society of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition released a pediatric malnutrition consensus statement in 2014 recommending the use of z-scores as indicators for identification and documentation of malnutrition. A shift in focus is needed on standardizing pediatric malnutrition language at institutions nationwide to make study data comparable. With this standardized language, establishment of institutional baselines for identification, coding, and reimbursement of pediatric malnutrition is crucial to measure process improvements.
The objectives of this study were to determine the prevalence of malnutrition among pediatric patients at an urban academic medical center, the frequency of malnutrition codes used, and the reimbursement impact of coding for malnutrition.
Electronic medical records of pediatric patients admitted from January 2013 to December 2015 were reviewed. Malnutrition was identified based on registered dietitian identification and z-score. Patients given a malnutrition-related International Classification of Diseases code upon discharge were identified. A reimbursement calculation was performed: the malnutrition-related International Classification of Diseases code was removed to determine the difference in reimbursement with vs without the code.
Of the 1,532 admissions included in this study, 464 (30%) were identified as malnourished. A total of 152 (33%) malnourished patients were given a malnutrition-related secondary diagnosis. The calculation revealed that coding for malnutrition resulted in an additional $27,665.70 to the medical center.
Malnutrition coding may have a significant financial impact and processes improvement efforts can be made to improve malnutrition coding.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 20 December 2018.
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#7,822,893
of 24,458,924 outputs
Outputs from Nutrition in Clinical Practice
#651
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Outputs of similar age
#129,737
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Outputs of similar age from Nutrition in Clinical Practice
#9
of 37 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,458,924 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 67th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,481 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 55% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 37 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 75% of its contemporaries.
