Surgical Readmission Rate Variation Dependent on Surgical Volume, Surgical Mortality Rates
Clinical question: What factors determine rates of readmission after major surgery?
Background: Reducing hospital readmission rates has become a national priority. The U.S. patterns for surgical readmissions are unknown, as are the specific structural and quality characteristics of hospitals associated with lower surgical readmission rates.
Study design: Retrospective study of national Medicare data was used to calculate 30-day readmission rates for six major surgical procedures.
Setting: U.S. Hospitals, 2009-2010.
Synopsis: Six major surgical procedures were tracked by Medicare data, with 479,471 discharges from 3,004 hospitals. Structural characteristics included hospital size, teaching status, region, ownership, and proportion of patients living below the federal poverty line. Three well-established measures of surgical quality were used: the HQA surgical score, procedure volume, and 30-day mortality.
Hospitals in the highest quartile for surgical volume had a significantly lower readmission rate. Additionally, hospitals with the lowest surgical mortality rates had significantly lower readmission rates. Interestingly, high adherence to reported surgical process measures was only marginally associated with reduced admission rates. Prior studies have also shown inconsistent relationship between HQA surgical score and mortality.
Limitations to this study include inability to account for factors not captured by billing codes and the focus on a Medicare population.
Bottom line: Surgical readmission rates are associated with measures of surgical quality, specifically procedural volume and mortality.
Citation: Tsai TC, Joynt KE, Orav EJ, Gawande AA, Jha AK. Variation in surgical-readmission rates and quality of hospital care. 2013;369(12):1134-1142.
