causes of readmission of patients to alzahra hospital, iran

background: maintaining a balance between cost-effectiveness and the delivery of quality patient care is a continual challenge to modern health care systems. in addition to negative effects on the patient and his family's quality of life, readmission after major surgeries imposes substantial adverse economic effects on the health care delivery system. therefore, causes of readmission to alzahra hospital were determined. methods: this cross sectional study was conducted on medical records of 161 patients who were admitted during the first half of 2006 in alzahra hospital and readmitted to the same hospital within a three month period. the data was analyzed by spss and using chi-square and mann-whitney u tests.  findings: the main reasons of readmission to alzahra hospital included follow up (36.6%) , recurrence of the disease (20.5%), a new disease (18%), canceling an operation (5.6%), complications of surgery (4.3%), infection (3.1%), treatment failure (2.5%), post surgery infection (1.5% ), discharge without the physician's order (1.2%) and wrong diagnosis (1.2%) . conclusion: since among the several factors that contribute to readmission of the patients, 3 most important groups are personal factors, clinical factors and hospital-related factors.