Strategies to decrease the rate of preventable readmission to hospital.

摘要

In developing a tool to predict early death and unplanned readmissions to hospital, van Walraven and colleagues point to the fact that readmissions are expensive, common and often preventable, as others have stated. The rates of hospital readmission can be important indicators of quality of care. They have joined mortality and complication rates as promising quality outcome measures that do not require intensive chart review, and can therefore be used to screen large numbers of records and provide a basis for comparing measures of hospital performance.