More-2-Eat Phase 2: Spread/Scaling up Improved Nutrition Care to Detect and Treat Hospital Malnutrition.

Malnutrition in hospital patients is a growing problem, with 20-45% of patients already malnourished at admission. As 70% of malnourished patients are also frail, early detection and treatment of malnutrition is one way to improve the outcomes of frail older adults. To improve the detection and treatment of these conditions, the PI developed the Integrated Nutrition Pathway for Acute Care (INPAC) that guides hospital staff on when to conduct key nutrition care activities to improve outcomes (e.g. screening at admission).

In More-2-Eat (April 2015-March 2017), 5 Canadian hospital units in 4 provinces received funding to implement INPAC. Each hospital, with support from a research team had 1 year to implement INPAC. All 5 hospitals were successful in improving detection and treatment of malnutrition, and started to screen for frailty. Clinical care was transformed in the study units; for example all sites progressed from low baseline or no screening at admission to a rate of 75%. Findings also demonstrate improvement in clinical outcomes such as a shorter length of stay. An online INPAC Implementation Toolkit was developed to promote mobilization of this knowledge. What is not known is whether or not the results can be replicated under normal circumstances (i.e., no external funding for implementation at a hospital site).

To sustain and expand on this success, a Phase 2 knowledge translation project is proposed that will involve the five original Phase 1 sites and five further hospitals as Phase 2 sites. The goal of the second phase is to see if Phase 1 sites can spread success to other units within their hospitals and if Phase 2 sites can achieve similar results across a broader group of patients.

The end product will be a sustainable model including a community of practice supported by our partner the Canadian Malnutrition Task Force, and a self-serve registry that allows sites to collect and report data to change their practice. Investigators will also confirm capacity of INPAC activities to improve clinical outcomes across diverse settings. This knowledge translation and implementation study will demonstrate the potential to transform clinical nutrition care, benefiting all pre-frail and frail older adults.