The Economic Cost of Hospital Malnutrition in Europe; a Narrative Review

Background: Malnutrition among hospitalized patients increases length of stay (LOS) and carries extra hospitalization costs.

Objective: To review the impact of malnutrition on hospital LOS and costs in Europe.

Methods: PubMed and Google Scholar search. All articles from January 2004 until November 2014 were identified. Reference lists of relevant articles were also manually searched.

Results: Ten studies on LOS and nine studies on costs were reviewed. The methods used to assess malnutrition and to calculate costs differed considerably between studies. Malnutrition led to an increased LOS ranging from 2.4 to 7.2 days. Among hospitalized patients, malnutrition led to an additional individual cost ranging between 1640 € and 5829 €. At the national level, the costs of malnutrition ranged between 32.8 million € and 1.2 billion €. Expressed as percentage of national health expenditures, the values ranged between 2.1% and 10%.

Conclusions: In Europe, malnutrition leads to an increase in LOS and in hospital costs, both at the individual and the national level. Standardization of methods and results reported is needed to adequately compare results between countries.