Causes of Hospital Readmissions at the Community Level

Abstract

Reducing inpatient hospital readmissions has been an important component of efforts to improve outcomes and reduce health care costs. This study focused on evaluation of the clinical causes of hospital readmissions of adult medical/surgical patients within 30 days between October 2015 and September 2016. It was based on the principal diagnoses of readmissions, a definition that is used throughout the health care industry in the United States. The study focused on adult medicine and adult surgery readmissions in Syracuse, New York, a small metropolitan area, during a twelve month period. It included almost 4000 individual readmissions. The study data demonstrated that only about 22 percent of inpatient readmissions were for the same diagnoses as the initial admissions that preceded them. The study data also indicated that another 20 percent of hospital readmissions involved a diagnosis different from that of the initial admission but in the same body system. Most importantly, the study demonstrated that a consistent majority of inpatient readmissions were caused by diagnoses in different body systems than the initial. The data suggested that efforts to address the causes of hospital readmissions should be based on management of a broad range of adult medicine conditions, rather than individual diagnoses.