[Does the nutritional care plan and report upon discharge under the health care system substitute the nutrition support team summary at patient discharge?].

Our nutrition support team (NST) designed the NST summary for cooperation among personnel providing medical care for nutritional management of high-need patients in our area. After the introduction of the NST fee under the health care system, the number of summary publications decreased. The requested NST fee is necessary for publication of a nutritional care plan and report upon patient discharge. We hypothesized that the nutritional care plan and discharge report were being substituted for the NST summary at the time of patient discharge. We retrospectively investigated 192 cases with NST fee. There were only 13 cases of overlapping publication, and the NST summary was necessary for 107 of 179 cases in which no NST summary had been prepared. Since the space on the report form is limited, it can provide only limited information. However, the NST summary can convey detailed supplementary information. Therefore, there is a high need for the NST summary, and publication of NST summaries for the appropriate cases must continue.