Chapter 11.4, Problem 19AYU

Hospital Readmission As of October 1, 2012, hospitals in the United States with excessive numbers of readmissions based on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) data were penalized. Therefore, it is important for hospitals to identify the risk factors associated with readmission. The following data represent statistics on patients readmitted within 30 days and those not readmitted within 30 days of being discharged at a community hospital. Conduct the appropriate test for each variable that might be associated with readmission (age, length of stay, and so on). Researchers wonder if:

• the readmits tend to be older
• is length of stay longer for readmits
• were a higher proportion of readmits admitted the previous calendar year
• were a higher proportion of readmits discharged in winter
• were a higher proportion of readmits on the cardiac floor

Write a short report detailing your findings.

Source: Lee Park, Danielle Andrade, Andrew Mastey, James Sun, LeRoi Hicks “Institution Specific Risk Factors for 30 Day Readmission at a Community Hospital. A Retrospective Observational Study” BioMedCentral 2014 14:40

	Readmit	Non-Readmit
n	637	3137
Age	Mean: 78.0 Standard deviation: 13.7	Mean: 76.0 Standard deviation: 15.8
Length of stay on previous visit	Mean: 4.8 Standard deviation: 4.3	Mean: 3.9 Standard deviation: 3.1
Admission in previous calendar year	139 out of 637	445 out of 3137
Season	199 out of 637 readmits were discharged in winter	765 out of 3137 non-readmits were discharged in winter
Floor	332 out of 637 readmits were on the cardiac floor	1617 out of 3137 non-readmits were on the cardiac floor