Hospital readmissions receive increasing interest from policy makers because reducing unnecessary readmissions has the potential to simultaneously improve quality and save costs. This paper reviews readmission policies in Denmark, England, Germany and the United States (Medicare system). The suggested roadmap enables researchers and policy makers to systematically compare and analyse readmissio...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Unplanned hospital readmission is a devastating experience for patients and is costly for society. This study determined the 60-day unplanned readmission rate and its predicting factors in patients with chronic conditions. METHODS A total of 334 patients discharged from five hospitals were followed for 2 months after discharge. Patients enrolled in the study were disabl...

BACKGROUND Since October of 2012, Medicare's Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program has fined 2,200 hospitals a total of $500 million. Although the program penalizes readmission to any hospital, many institutions can only track readmissions to their own hospitals. We sought to determine the extent to which same-hospital readmission rates can be used to estimate all-hospital readmission rates a...

OBJECTIVE Though 30-day rates of readmission for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) remain high, readmission rates and associated risk factors have not been well examined. The purpose of the present study was to determine the risk factors for and rates of readmission and to compare two revascularization methods on that basis. METHODS The s...

BACKGROUND Readmission rates following discharge after pneumonia are thought to represent the quality of care. Factors associated with readmission, however, remain poorly described. It is unclear if readmission rates vary based on pneumonia type. METHODS We retrospectively identified adults admitted to an index hospital with non-nosocomial pneumonia (January through December 2010) and who sur...

PURPOSE Reducing hospital readmissions requires deploying appropriate interventions to groups at highest risk for readmission. Long-term medication adherence may indicate one's ability to manage recovery and chronic illness after discharge. If so, medication adherence also may be a predictor of hospital readmission. DESIGN The objective of this study was to test the association of long-term m...

BACKGROUND Readmission penalties are central to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) efforts to improve patient outcomes and reduce health care spending. However, many clinicians believe that readmission metrics may unfairly penalize low-mortality hospitals because mortality and readmission are competing risks. The objective of this study is to compare hospital ranking based on ...

BACKGROUND Young women (<65 years) experience a 2- to 3-fold greater mortality risk than younger men after an acute myocardial infarction. However, it is unknown whether they are at higher risk for 30-day readmission, and if this association varies by age. We examined sex differences in the rate, timing, and principal diagnoses of 30-day readmissions, including the independent effect of sex fol...

Heart failure (HF) is the most common hospital discharge diagnosis among the elderly. It accounts for nearly 1.4 million hospitalizations and $21 billion in spending per year in the United States. Readmission rates remain high with estimates ranging from 15-day readmission rates of 13%, 30day readmission rates of 25%, to 6-month readmission rates of 50%. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Ser...

BACKGROUND The significance of hospital readmission after endovascular therapy for critical limb ischemia (CLI) is not well established. We sought to investigate the incidence, timing, and causes of readmissions after endovascular therapy for CLI and whether readmission is associated with major adverse limb events (MALE) or mortality. METHODS AND RESULTS This was a retrospective study of 252 ...