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Nursing home patients with advanced cognitive impairment often are fed through feeding tubes that were inserted during acute hospitalizations. To identify factors associated with feeding tube placement during acute hospitalizations, researchers analyzed Medicare claims files and federally mandated data collected from U.S. nursing homes. The study involved 163,000 nursing home patients with advanced cognitive impairment who were admitted to 2800 acute-care hospitals between 2000 and 2007.
The mean rate of feeding tube insertion (usually percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy [PEG] tubes) was 7 insertions per 100 hospitalizations, but the rate across hospitals varied from 0 to 39 insertions per 100 hospitalizations. Hospital characteristics assoc…