Readmissions in internal medicine: Epidemiology and determinants

A comprehensive framework identifying readmission risk factors using the CHAID algorithm: a prospective cohort study

“…A direct comparison of the observed readmission rates with those reported by different studies is difficult owing to wide variations in case identification, time period and other factors. However, the readmission rates of patients discharged from the general medicine wards, as reported by several studies (11.9-19.0%) [9,10,12,27,28], were similar to those we observed in this study. In some previous studies conducted in Turkey, readmission rates were 19.0% for heart failure [29], 7.6% for spinal cord injury [30], 20.0% for psychiatric patients [31] and 9.0% after colorectal cancer surgery [32].…”

“…In our results, we noted that the comorbidity score gained significance as a readmission risk predictor when the patients' diagnosis belonged to the second or third group. Several other studies conducted on patients in internal-medicine wards have reported the association between a high comorbidity score and an increased risk of readmission [9,12,40,41]. Therefore, patients with a high comorbidity score must be regularly followed-up by primary-care providers post-discharge, and an effective referral chain must be established.…”

“…Previous studies in other countries have shown that several factors, including patients' age [6][7][8][9], sex [7,8], marital status [10], comorbidity status [6,7,[9][10][11][12], length of stay at index admission [6][7][8][9][10][11][12] and specific clinical conditions [7,8,12,13] were associated with readmission. Many studies in different countries suggested that access to effective primary care will reduce readmission rate [1,[14][15][16][17][18].…”