BACKGROUND Acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) increase COPD morbidity and mortality and impose a great burden on health care systems. Early readmission following a hospitalization for AECOPD remains an important clinical problem. We examined how individualized comprehensive care influences readmissions following an index hospital admission for AECOPD. METHOD...

BACKGROUND The current ability to predict readmissions in patients with heart failure is modest at best. It is unclear whether machine learning techniques that address higher dimensional, nonlinear relationships among variables would enhance prediction. We sought to compare the effectiveness of several machine learning algorithms for predicting readmissions. METHODS AND RESULTS Using data fro...

BACKGROUND Reducing hospital readmissions is a key component of reforms for stroke care. Current readmission prediction models lack accuracy and are limited by data being from only acute hospitalizations. We hypothesized that patient-level factors from a nationwide post-acute care database would improve prediction modeling. METHODS AND RESULTS Medicare inpatient claims for the year 2008 that ...

BACKGROUND Delivery of quality healthcare in resource-limited settings is an important, understudied public health priority. Thirty-day (early) hospital readmission is often avoidable and an important indicator of healthcare quality. METHODS We investigated the prevalence of all-cause early readmission and its associated factors using age and sex adjusted risk ratios (RR) and 95% confidence i...

Few studies have examined rates and causes of short-term readmissions among adults across age and insurance types. We compared rates, characteristics, and costs of 30-day readmission after all-cause hospitalizations across insurance types in the US. We retrospectively evaluated alive patients ≥18 years old, discharged for any cause, 1/1/13-11/31/13, 2006 non-federal hospitals in 21 states in th...

BACKGROUND: A readmission is classified as a patient necessitating readmission to hospital due to a post-operative complication following discharge. An overstay however, is classified as a patient having to stay longer than the planned duration in hospital (not having been discharged in the interim) due to a post-operative complication. This study aims to investigate patient-related factors tha...

BACKGROUND Thirty-day readmission rates have become a publicly reported quality performance measure for congestive heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). However, little is known regarding the factors associated with 30-day readmission after PCI. METHODS To assess the demographic, clinical, and procedural factors associated with 30-day readmi...

BACKGROUND Prior studies have found that obese patients have paradoxically lower in-hospital mortality after non-ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction than their normal-weight counterparts, yet whether these associations persist long term is unknown. METHODS AND RESULTS We linked detailed clinical data for patients with non-ST-segment-elevation myocardial infarction aged ≥65 years in the...

CONTEXT Total knee arthroplasty (TKA) is one of the most common and costly surgical procedures performed in the United States. OBJECTIVE To examine longitudinal trends in volume, utilization, and outcomes for primary and revision TKA between 1991 and 2010 in the US Medicare population. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Observational cohort of 3,271,851 patients (aged ≥65 years) who underwen...