Effect of hospital and specialty factors on readmissions

Editor's Note

Hospital surgical readmissions are primarily explained by patient- and procedure-specific factors and less by broader specialty and hospital effects, this study finds.

There was no correlation between specialty-specific readmissions for general and orthopedic, general and vascular, and vascular and orthopedic procedures.

Within specialties, there were modest correlations between knee and hip arthroplasty readmissions and colectomy and ventral hernia repair, but not between lower-extremity bypass and endovascular aortic repair.

Overall, 1.9% of the variation in readmissions was attributable to specialty-level factors. Only 0.6% was attributable to hospital-level factors.

Hospital readmission rates after surgery can represent an overall hospital effect or a combination of specialty and patient effects. We hypothesized that hospital readmission rates for procedures within specialties were more strongly correlated than rates across specialties within the same hospital.