Patients undergoing non-surgical care for chronic or acute conditions were back in the hospital significantly more often than patients initially hospitalized for surgical procedures, a study 30-day readmission rates in 15 large states has revealed.
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That's according to the latest statistical brief from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), which looked at 8.7 million discharges for all payers and all ages.
"Developing multi-state benchmarks for hospital readmission rates can help to identify opportunities for targeted improvement efforts," the brief said.
For example, 22.7% of patients undergoing non-surgical hospitalizations for chronic conditions, and 18% of those undergoing non-surgical hospitalization for acute conditions, were back in the hospital within 30 days.
But for patients hospitalized for surgery, the readmission rates were lower, 12.6% and 12.5% respectively. The study is especially significant because these 15 states where the hospital discharge information came from represent 42% of the U.S. population.
One in five non-surgical hospitalizations resulted in a readmission within 30 days across all payer and age groups, but for those who underwent surgery during their initial hospitalizations, the rate was one in eight, the brief said.
Large differences were seen in a number of categories. For example, 16.2% of Medicaid patients were re-hospitalized within 30 days of their initial surgical visit if they had a chronic condition, but only 8.7% were re-hospitalized if they had an acute condition.
And 12.6% of those covered by private health insurance initially hospitalized for surgery, defined as requiring an operating room, were readmitted if they had a chronic condition, compared with 6.3% of those who had an acute condition. Medicare patients were an exception. In this population, 12.3% were re-hospitalized if they had a chronic condition, but 17% if they had an acute condition.
For those patients initially hospitalized for non-surgical illnesses or conditions, in every category patients were more likely to undergo readmission if they had chronic conditions than if they had an acute condition.
The report also revealed that for children ages 1 to 17, the 30-day readmission rate was two times higher when the initial stay was to treat a chronic condition rather than an acute condition, regardless of whether the initial stay involved a surgical intervention.
And for privately-insured adults ages 45-64, the 30-day readmission rate following surgical hospitalizations was similar across chronic and acute conditions.