Essential connections: the impact of a hospital-to-community referral intervention on nutrition care and health outcomes in older adults with malnutrition: a hybrid type 2 implementation effectiveness study protocol

Top Things to Know

This study could reinforce the idea that FIM interventions work best when embedded into care transitions.

Data-sharing infrastructure could enable effective FIM intervention delivery.

Community-based nutrition care may improve outcomes that matter to patients and systems.

Summary of Conclusion/Findings

This paper describes the protocol for the CONNECT Study, a hybrid type 2 implementation-effectiveness study evaluating an enhanced hospital-to-community referral model for older adults (≥60 years) diagnosed with malnutrition. The intervention connects hospitalized patients to community-based registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs) and meal programs after discharge using a shared health informatics platform (ANDHII), with the goal of improving continuity of nutrition care. The study is designed to test whether this model increases the proportion of patients receiving post-discharge medical nutrition therapy (MNT) and meal provision compared with usual care. The authors hypothesize that participants receiving the enhanced referral will experience improvements in food security, malnutrition indicators, and quality of life over a 90-day post-discharge period. The study also seeks to identify implementation barriers, facilitators, and feasibility across diverse hospital–community site pairs. If successful, findings are expected to support scalable, technology-enabled nutrition transition models for older adults with malnutrition.