• BMC emergency medicine · Jan 2005

    Factors influencing emergency medical readmission risk in a UK district general hospital: A prospective study.

    • Georgios Lyratzopoulos, Daniel Havely, Islay Gemmell, and Gary A Cook.
    • Directorate of Clinical Services and Public Health, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire Strategic Health Authority, Fulbourn, UK. Georgios.Lyratzopoulos@nscstha.nhs.uk.
    • BMC Emerg Med. 2005 Jan 21; 5 (1): 1.

    BackgroundOver recent years increased emphasis has been given to performance monitoring of NHS hospitals, including overall number of hospital readmissions, which however are often sub-optimally adjusted for case-mix. We therefore conducted a study to examine the effect of various patient and disease factors on the risk of emergency medical readmission. MethodsThe study setting was a District General Hospital in Greater Manchester and the study period was 4.5-years. All index emergency medical admission during the study period leading to a live discharge were included in the study (n = 20,209). A multivariable proportional hazards modelling was used, based on Hospital Episodes Statistics data, to examine the influence of various baseline factors on readmission risk. Deprivation status was measured with the Townsend deprivation index score. Hazard ratios (HR) and associated 95% confidence intervals (CI) of unplanned emergency medical admission by sex, age group, admission method, diagnostic group, number of coded co-morbidities, length of stay and patient's deprivation status quartile, were calculated. ResultsSignificant independent predictors of readmission risk at 12 months were male sex (HR 1.13, CI: 1.07-1.2), age (age >75 (HR 1.57, CI 1.45-1.7), number of coded co-morbidities (HR for >4 coded co-morbidities: 1.49 CI: 1.26-1.76), admission via GP referral (HR 0.93, CI 0.88-0.99) and primary diagnosis of heart failure (HR 1.33, CI: 1.16-1.53) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease/asthma (HR 1.34, CI: 1.21-1.48). Higher level of deprivation was also significantly and independently associated and with increased emergency medical readmission risk at three (HR for the most deprived quartile 1.21, CI: 1.08-1.35), six (HR 1.21, CI: 1.1-1.33) and twelve months (HR 1.25, CI: 1.16-1.36). ConclusionsThere is a potential for improving health and reducing demand for emergency medical admissions with more effective management of patients with heart failure and chronic obstructive airways disease/asthma. There is also a potential for improving health and reducing demand if reasons for increased readmission risk in more deprived patients are understood. The potential influence of deprivation status on readmission risk should be acknowledged, and NHS performance indicators adjustment for deprivation case-mix would be prudent.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…