• Oğuz Abdullah UyaroĞlu, BaŞaranNursel ÇalikNÇFaculty of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Section of General Internal Medicine, Hacettepe University, Sıhhiye, Ankara, 06430, Turkey., Lale ÖziŞik, Gülçİn Tellİ Dİzman, İmdat EroĞlu, Taha Koray Şahİn, Zahİt TaŞ, Ahmet Çağkan İnkaya, Mıne Durusu TanriÖver, Gökhan Metan, Gülay Saİn GÜven, and Serhat Ünal.
• Faculty of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Section of General Internal Medicine, Hacettepe University, Sıhhiye, Ankara, 06430, Turkey.
• Int J Qual Health Care. 2021 Feb 20; 33 (1).

BackgroundThe 30-day readmission rate is an important indicator of patient safety and hospital's quality performance. In this study, we aimed to find out the 30-day readmission rate of mild and moderate severity coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) patients discharged from a tertiary care university hospital and to demonstrate the possible factors associated with readmission.MethodsThis is an observational, single-center study. Epidemiological and clinical data of patients who were hospitalized with a diagnosis of COVID-19 were retrieved from a research database where patient information was recorded prospectively. Readmission data were sought from the hospital information management system and the National Health Information System to detect if the patients were readmitted to any hospital within 30 days of discharge. Adult patients (≥18 years old) hospitalized in COVID-19 wards with a diagnosis of mild or moderate COVID-19 between 20 March 2020 (when the first case was admitted to our hospital) and 26 April 2020 were included.ResultsFrom 26 March to 1 May, there were 154 mild or moderate severity (non-critical) COVID-19 patients discharged from COVID-19 wards, of which 11 (7.1%) were readmitted. The median time of readmission was 8.1 days (interquartile range [IQR] = 5.2). Two patients (18.1%) were categorized to have mild disease and the remaining 9 (81.9%) as moderate disease. Two patients who were over 65 years of age and had metastatic cancers and hypertension developed sepsis and died in the hospital during the readmission episode. Malignancy (18.7% vs. 2.1%, P = 0.04) and hypertension (45.5% vs. 14%, P = 0.02) were more common in those who were readmitted.ConclusionsThis is one of the first studies to report on 30-day readmission rate of COVID-19 in the literature. More comprehensive studies are needed to reveal the causes and predictors of COVID-19 readmissions.© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of International Society for Quality in Health Care. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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