Dive Brief:
- New research in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice identifies several factors that indicate high risk for unplanned hospital readmissions.
- The study, which analyzed the Belgian Hospital Discharge Dataset of patients discharged in 2008, found an overall unplanned readmission rate of 5.2%.
- It concludes that hospitals should target patients with chronic cardiovascular or pulmonary diseases, the most common reasons it found for readmission. Other patient risk factors included four or more ED visits in the past 6 months, discharge on a Friday, and a long length of stay.
Dive Insight:
The study suggests that hospitals should take action to reduce unplanned readmissions among those patient groups identified, such as preventing complications and multiple ED visits, and ensuring continuity of care after discharge.
The researchers focused on patients who had been readmitted to the same hospital within 30 days of discharge and considered it "unplanned" when the readmission was coded as urgent.
The study notes that in 2004, nearly one-fifth of U.S. Medicare patients were readmitted within the study's benchmark of 30 days of discharge, costing $17.4 billion.