Cost-effectiveness Study of the New Nutrition Screening Tool CIPA at Hospital Admission

University Hospital of the Nuestra Señora de Candelaria

Status: Completed

Conditions: Malnutrition

Treatments: Other: CIPA nutritional screening tool

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02721706

PI14/01226

Details and patient eligibility

About

Objectives: To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of implementing a malnutrition screening tool "CIPA" at the Hospital Universitario Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria (HUNSC), comparing the impact on health and the healthcare costs of hospitalised patients who are screened for malnutrition and of patients following standard clinical practice. Methodology: The study will consist of a controlled trial on patients admitted to the Internal Medicine and General and Digestive Surgery wards at the HUNSC. In both wards patients will be assigned to a control or to an intervention group. The control group will follow usual hospital clinical care, while the intervention group will be administered the screening tool "CIPA" for early detection of malnutrition cases and they will be treated according to the screening results. The following variables will be evaluated: length of stay in hospital, mortality, readmissions and in-hospital complications. Cost-effectiveness analysis will be undertaken measuring effectiveness by Quality-Adjusted Life Years (QALYs). Cost per patient will be measured by identifying health care resource utilisation, and the cost-effectiveness measure will be the Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratio (ICER). Investigators will calculate the incremental cost per QALY gained related to the intervention. This analysis will allow to quantify the costs (incurred and saved) related to the introduction of the malnutrition screening tool CIPA in the hospital context and to measure the health impact of screened patients.

Enrollment: 823 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Formal consent to participate in the study.
• Patients admitted to the Internal Medicine or General Surgery wards.

Exclusion criteria

• Patients treated with nutritional support before CIPA screening is performed.
• Patients transferred from other wards.
• Patients with an expected length of stay less than 72 hours.
• CIPA screening unfeasible for any reason.
• Patients with poor short-term prognosis.
• Bed destination at hospital admission nonrandomized.
• Patients participating in other investigation study.
• Pregnancy

Trial design

Primary purpose: Screening

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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823 participants in 2 patient groups

CIPA screening tool

Experimental group

Description:

Patients are evaluated by CIPA nutritional screening tool

Treatment:

Other: CIPA nutritional screening tool

usual hospital clinical care

No Intervention group

Description:

Patients are not subject of CIPA screening tool, and continue the usual hospital clinical care