Association of postop readmission with quality

Editor's Note

One-third of postoperative readmissions are unlikely to reflect problems with surgical quality, this study finds.

Readmissions with diagnoses that were considered associated with surgical quality accounted for 25,521 of 39,664 readmissions (64%) at a VA medical center between October 1, 2007 and September 30, 2014.

The proportion of readmissions considered to be unrelated to surgical quality varied by procedure, ranging from 21% after lower-extremity amputations to 47% after cholecystectomy.

Further research should examine whether restricting the definition of postoperative readmission to admission codes thought to identify surgical quality would yield a more useful quality measure, the researchers say.