This is an interesting study that provides useful insights to those working in nutrition care within hospital settings. I commend the authors on their generally clear and well written manuscript, and comprehensive presentation of data and associated analyses. I have only a few questions for clarification. The vast majority of my suggestions are of a very minor nature and relate to consistency or clarity within the manuscript. My main concerns relate to the title of the paper, the inclusion of some justification and explanation with the introduction and/or discussion to better position the paper, and a query about the inclusion of indigenous status as a risk for HAM which does not seem to be supported by the statistical results given.
Specific comments to address given below:

Overall:
To better position the reason for the study, and its importance, the introduction and/or discussion would benefit from a brief description of why detecting pre-existing malnutrition and preventing HAM is desirable e.g. in terms of both patient outcomes and with reference to receipt of hospital funding within the Australian system. Reference is made in the results to HAM cases not being detected by clinical coders, and it seems likely the authors are aware of the funding implications related to malnutrition POA and HAM. Brief mention of this should be made.
General: suggest use of either “Dashboard” or “Nutrition Dashboard” throughout for consistency – in particular, note the term “clinical Dashboard’ is used in the title but does not appear elsewhere.
Title:
I am not sure the title accurately reflects the main points of the manuscript – for example, was the Dashboard truly used to identify high risk long stay patients? Furthermore, use of the term ‘clinical dashboard’ does not reflect terminology elsewhere in the manuscript.
Abstract:
See comments in full manuscript review below and address any changes for alignment in abstract if required – ie exclusion of ICU patients, statistical tests used, Indigenous overrepresentation claim.
Page 2 Line 21 – Re-consider opening sentence of “HAM is a significant issue amongst malnourished patients.” In general, the abstract conclusion does not accurately reflect the findings of the study, and should be rewritten to do so.

Introduction
Page 4 Line 23. ‘Dietitians’ should not be capitalised.

Methods
Page 6 Line 12- consider using ‘were inpatients at one of five’… rather than ‘were admitted to one of five…” I originally understood the context as being patients whose day of admission was the day of study - obviously wrong when reading on about >14 day LOS, but confusing and requiring re-reading to dissect.
Pay 6 Line 14 – delete ‘any’ as obviously some wards were excluded, as per exclusion criteria.
Page 6 Line 18 - The term ‘palliative’ may require clarification. Some individuals may receive palliative care for many years and would reasonably be included in the study. Were such patients included, or is the term palliative intended to refer to those patients close to the end of life or on a care of the dying pathway (or similar term for your facilities), where nutrition assessment and intervention would be inappropriate? If so, perhaps rephrase to use dying/end of life rather than palliative.
Page 8 Line 2 – ‘POA’ not previously defined
Page 8 Line 18 – Presumably ‘well malnourished’ was intended to be ‘well nourished’
Page 10 Line 7 – for consistency, would be good to present n= for malnutrition POA, as for others.
Page 23 Figure 1: ‘MSH’ hospital not defined
Page 10 Line 22 – Query appropriateness of claiming over representation of Indigenous patients in the HAM group when p= 0.073, while methods clearly state significance assigned at p=0.05. Later mention of a ‘trend’ with p-=0.053 seems more reasonable, but 0.073 is harder to accept.
Page 11 Line 2 – reference is many to well nourished participants being more likely in the intensive care unit, while methods state ICU was excluded from eligibility. Please address this inconsistency at one or other place.
Page 11 Line 17 – McNemars test not mentioned in methods.
Page 11 Line 24 – ‘dashboard’ not capitalised as elsewhere – check for consistency throughout.
Page 12 Line 4 – This sentence is hard to follow. Please rephrase. Similarly in the next sentence - who the remaining 12 patients are is unclear, as is how the 5 with SGA relate to the PG-SGA repeats, who the 10 are, etc… Please revise this section for clarity.

Discussion
Page 13 Line 14 – Does this statement align with presented results? See comment above re Page 12 Line 4 clarity. Earlier section appears to state that one patient did decline from mod to severe malnutrition.
Page 13 Line 21-24 - please rephrase for clarity. Do you mean the rate of nutritional decline observed in your study may be lower than other studies? Or that the actual rate of nutritional decline present at your study sites may have been lower than you report due to the difference in time period considered?
Page 14 Line 20-21 - see previous comment (results section) about validity of claim of Indigenous HAM over representation.
Page 15 Line 4-6 – This sentence could perhaps be re-phrased. Currently, it reads as if there are certain to be differences in the collected characteristics if only enough HAM cases could be found, which is not necessarily true. Eg consider rephrasing as any significant differences may not have been detectable due to the small sample size, or similar. Or alternatively provide justification as to why there definitely would be differences in characteristics found with a larger sample size, to support the assertion in the sentence as it currently stands.
Page 15 Line 17 – a preceding explanatory sentence (ie that there are multiple places in ieMR where malnutrition could be documented/no current standardisation for documentation/that the ieMR system is highly complex and convoluted) to set the scene would be useful. Logically, a reader might assume this would be the manner in which the system works, even if it is not in fact the case in practice.

Conclusion
Page 16 Line 24 – as previous, consider validity of inclusion of Indigenous status here.