Note: The study's lead author, Naomi Bardach, MD, utilized CTSI's Comparative Effectiveness Large Dataset Analysis Core (CELDAC) to support her research. “CELDAC was instrumental in providing coordinated access to all the databases I used in the study. The study took advantage of the combined data of myself and others who were also using SID [State Inpatient Databases] to examine hospital and emergency department care nationally. It is a pleasure to know that the data I used for this study are available for use at UCSF,” she said.
Readmission rates of adult patients to the same hospital within 30 days are an area of national focus and a potential indicator of clinical failure and unnecessary expenditures.
However, a new UC San Francisco study shows that hospital readmissions rates for children are not necessarily meaningful measures of the quality of their care.
In the first multi-state study of children’s and non-children’s hospitals, assessing pediatric readmission and revisit rates – being admitted into the hospital again or visiting the emergency room within 30 days of discharge – for common pediatric conditions, UCSF researchers found that diagnosis-specific readmission and revisit rates are limited in their usefulness as a quality indicator for pediatric hospital care.
The study found that when comparing hospitals’ performance based on revisits, few hospitals that care for children can be identified as being better or worse than average, even for common pediatric diagnoses.
“As a national way of assessing and tracking hospital quality, pediatric readmissions and revisits, at least for specific diagnoses, are not useful to families trying to find a good hospital, nor to the hospitals trying to improve their pediatric care,” said Naomi Bardach, MD, an assistant professor of pediatrics at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and lead author. “Measuring and reporting them publicly would waste limited hospital and health care resources.”
The work will be published in the September issue of journal Pediatrics.
Read more at UCSF.edu