Do countries or hospitals with longer hospital stays for acute heart failure have lower readmission rates?: Findings from ASCEND-HF

Hospital readmission is an important clinical outcome of patients with heart failure. Its relation to length of stay for the initial hospitalization is not clear. We used hierarchical modeling of data from a clinical trial to examine variations in length of stay across countries and across hospitals in the United States and its association with readmission within 30 days of randomization. Main outcomes included associations between country-level length of stay and readmission rates, after adjustment for patient-level case mix; and associations between length of stay and readmission rates across sites in the United States. Across 27 countries with 389 sites and 6848 patients, mean length of stay ranged from 4.9 to 14.6 days (6.1 days in the United States). Rates of all-cause readmission ranged from 2.5% to 25.0% (17.8% in the United States). There was an inverse correlation between country-level mean length of stay and readmission (r=-0.52; P