Hospital readmissions following surgeries may not be a good measure of the quality of care because most surgical readmissions are caused by complications that arise after discharge, according to study published in JAMA.
Researchers from Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine and the American College of Surgeons looked at nearly 500,000 patient cases across six surgical procedures to examine the underlying reason for readmissions.
The study pointed to the following key statistics.
- 97 percent of readmissions resulted from expected surgical complications that occurred after a patient left the hospital.
- 5.7 percent of the cases had unplanned readmissions.
- 2.3 percent of those unplanned readmissions were due to complications that occurred during the initial hospital stay.
- 19.5 percent of unplanned readmissions were caused by surgical-site infections.
- 10.3 percent of unplanned readmissions were caused by delayed return of bowel function.
"The results clearly demonstrate that the vast majority of complications that cause readmissions are not due to a lack of coordination or complications that occurred during the initial hospitalizations," lead author Karl Bilimoria, MD, vice chair for quality at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and director of the Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement Center at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a statement. "These complications were new and occurred after the patients were discharged and were recovering at home."
The results do indicate hospitals should focus on better coordinating patient transitions to reduce readmissions and improve health outcomes.
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