Malnutrition / Obesity and Improving Outcomes Research

Malnutrition/Obesity and Improving Outcomes
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Introduction
Hospital-based professionals face a lot of challenges when it comes to providing quality and affordable healthcare in the current era where there is a lot of pressure on the practitioners to deliver high quality healthcare (Lim, et al., 2012).Malnutrition has in the recent past emerged as one of the major challenges when it comes to achieving the expected healthcare outcomes. A research article by Tappended el al. (2013) discusses how hospital malnutrition healthcare outcomes and at the same time suggest some of the strategies that can be used to address the negative effects of hospital malnutrition on healthcare outcomes. According to this article, most adverse clinical outcomes are associated with malnutrition and call for a multi-disciplinary approach when it comes to dealing with the challenge of malnutrition during the hospital phase as well after discharge from the hospital. This paper will review the key findings in this article regarding how health outcomes can be improved by addressing malnutrition among patients.
Research
According to research findings, it is possible to reduce the cost of care, mortality, readmission rates, length of hospital stay as well as complication rates through early nutrition intervention (Seres et al., 2015). Tappended el al. (2013) observe thathospital malnutrition still remains a major challenge in a country such as the US and recent healthcare policies focus on critical issues such as transparency, quality and cost. Therefore, it is important for all the stakeholders in healthcare delivery to promptly intervene in the situation through identification of malnourished patients and those that are at a great risk. Recent research findings indicate that one in every three patients that admitted in healthcare facilities is already malnourished and there are high chances that the patients may continue to decline nutritionally if the problem is not addressed in time (Tappended el al. 2013).
When it comes to addressing the challenge of malnutrition among patients, Tappended el al. (2013) argue that it is important to include all the major stakeholders from various discipline...