Study: Readmission common after emergency general surgery

Editor's Note

Readmission after emergency general surgery procedures is common and varies widely according to patient factors and diagnosis, this study finds.

Of more than 177,000 patients analyzed, nearly 6% were readmitted within 30 days. The most common reasons were surgical site infections (16.9%), gastrointestinal complications (11.3%), and pulmonary complications (3.6%).

Patients with a higher risk of readmission were those with comorbidities, those discharged against medical advice, and those with public health insurance.

One in five patients was readmitted to a different hospital, which the authors say, causes fragmentation of care and obscures the use of readmission as a quality metric.

Importance Hospital readmission rates following surgery are increasingly being used as a marker of quality of care and are used in pay-for-performance metrics. To our knowledge, comprehensive data on readmissions to the initial hospital or a different hospital after emergency general surgery (EGS) procedures do not exist.