Preventability of Early Versus Late Hospital Readmissions

Akihiro Mine; Soichiro Ikeda; Tetsuya Makiishi; Rie Matsushita

doi:10.7326/L18-0608

Letters |5 February 2019

Preventability of Early Versus Late Hospital Readmissions

Akihiro Mine, MD; Soichiro Ikeda, MD; Tetsuya Makiishi, MD; Rie Matsushita, MD

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TO THE EDITOR:

Graham and colleagues (1) concluded that early readmissions were more likely to be preventable and amenable to hospital-based interventions than late readmissions. Our evaluation led us to determine that this article will have a great effect on the current health care system. However, we have concerns about the analysis and interpretation of the results.

First, the analysis did not consider some potential confounding factors. According to the article, the results were statistically adjusted only for hospital site, patient age, and all process-of-care variables. Other patient characteristics might also affect the rehospitalization rate. Several previous studies have shown that illness, race, and site of care can affect 30-day readmission rates (2, 3). We suggest that the authors identify statistical differences in patient characteristics between the 2 groups listed in Table 2 of their article and reevaluate the results after adjusting for additional confounders.

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2019 American College of Physicians

Letters |5 February 2019

Preventability of Early Versus Late Hospital Readmissions

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Letters |5 February 2019

Preventability of Early Versus Late Hospital Readmissions

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