Pediatric 30-day readmission rates may not be a valuable measure of hospital performance, according to a study in Pediatrics.
Researchers examined 30-day all-cause readmission rates and revisit rates for pediatric patients with one of seven common inpatient pediatric conditions. Revisit rates include both inpatient readmissions and visits to the emergency department within 30 days following a hospital discharge.
An analysis of data on 958 hospitals from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project revealed 30-day readmission rates were below 10 percent for all conditions and 30-day revisit rates were between 6.2 percent and 11 percent. At 4.2 percent, only one condition — mood disorders — had more than 1 percent of hospitals statistically different from the average 30-day revisit rate.
In addition, the number of condition-specific visits was low, contributing to the similar performance level across hospitals, according to the study. This lack of differentiation among hospitals suggests condition-specific readmission or revisit rates are not a useful quality measure, the authors concluded.
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