Figure 1

Correlation between duration and costs of admission. The figure shows that an improved nutritional care entails a (marginal) reduction in the hospitalisation period at the end of the period. Hotel costs include costs related to food, care, linen, cleaning, buildings and the like and the daily hotel cost is calculated as the bed day charge used in the DRG system for disbursement of hospital days in excess of the normal hospital admission period. (From Drummond MF, O'Brien B, Stoddart GL, Torrance GW. Methods for the economic evaluation of health care programmes. 1997: 63.)