30-Day Potentially Preventable Hospital Readmissions In Older Patients: Clinical Phenotype And Health Care Related Risk Factors

Early readmission rate has been regarded as an indicator of in-hospital and post-discharge quality of care. Evaluating the contributing factors is crucial to optimize the healthcare and target the intervention. In this study we evaluated the potential for preventing 30-day hospital readmission in a cohort of older patients and identified possible risk factors for readmission. Diagnosis-Related Group (DRG) codes of patients consecutively hospitalized for acute disease in the Geriatrics Unit of the University Hospital of Pisa within a 1-year window were recorded. All the patients had received a comprehensive geriatric assessment. Crossing and elaboration of the DRG codes was performed by the Potentially Preventable Readmission Grouping software (3M Corporation). DRG codes were classified as stand-alone admissions (SA), index admissions (IA) and potentially preventable readmissions (PPR) within a time window of 30 days after discharge. In total, 1263 SA and 171 IA were identified, with an overall PPR rate of 11.9%. Hospitalizations were significantly longer in IA and PPR than SA (p