Partners

The Dutch Malnutrition Steering Group (DMG) was established in 2005. This is a multi-professional group, consisting of physicians (e.g. a surgeon, geriatrician, anesthesiologist, general practitioner), dietitians, nurses and policy makers. Each participant represents their own profession and is able to make decisions on behalf of their profession. As an example the participating dietitian represents the Dutch Dietetic Association, the General Practitioner the Dutch GP association and so on. We have thus created an ability to draw on a wide range of resources as well as being able to resolve any issues more efficiently. At its start the Dutch Malnutrition Steering Group aimed to fight malnutrition only in the hospital setting. Later this was expanded to nursing homes as well as to the home care setting. The DMG has developed a consistent methodology to treat malnutrition. The methodology combines good clinical practice, scientific knowledge and field experience into simple instruments for screening and treating malnutrition.

The Dutch Annual Measurement of Care Problems (LPZ) started measuring malnutrition cross-sectionally in all health care settings in 2004. This provides new malnutrition prevalence data every year, with approximately 30,000 patients participating per year. This annual prevalence measurement has  proved  to be very important  in convincing  policymakers  about the seriousness of the problem caused by disease related malnutrition in all health care settings.

We are now using  the LPZ data to show trends in prevalence rates over several years.