Impact of nutritional therapy on the total cost of hospital accounts

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the impact of nutritional therapy on the total cost of hospital accounts in patients who used enteral or parenteral diet. Methods: This is a retrospective, cross-sectional, documental study with a qualitative and quantitative design, based on analysis of hospital accounts. Results: We analyzed 301 hospital accounts of 159 individuals. There were 208 accounts with enteral diet, 32 accounts with parenteral diet and 61 accounts with enteral and parenteral diet (concomitant use or not). The total cost in diet was 35.4% of the total cost of accounts. The cost in enteral diet was 59.8% of the total cost in diet. The cost in enteral diet was 59.8% of the total cost in diet. The cost in parenteral diets per patient was 2.2 times higher than the costs of enteral diet. Among the 10 health services studied, only four of them accounted for 88.3% of the hospital expenses and 93.0% of the total cost in diet. Most of them had a higher total cost with enteral diet. The relationship between diet cost and total cost of the hospital accounts varied of 2.4 to 44.4% in the health services. Conclusion: Nutritional therapy had a significant percentage of the total costs mainly due to the enteral diet. The analysis of the total cost in diet and the cost per day in hospitalization allowed identifying the profile of the use of nutritional therapy in each health service and this is an important information to the management of costs in diet.