Oral nutritional supplementation can shorten hospital stays and prevent unplanned readmissions in malnourished patients, yet many people go untreated, researchers have found.
According to a review of a large urban health care system, malnourished patients who received orders for oral nutrition supplements (ONS) had 10% fewer 30-day readmissions than their counterparts lacking those orders.
Gerard Mullin, MD, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore, led the retrospective