 Have hospital readmissions increased in the face of reductions in length of stay? Evidence from EnglandStephen Martin, Andrew Street, Lu Han and John Hutton Health Policy, 2016, vol. 120, issue 1, 89-99 Abstract: We assess the relationship between changes in hospital length of stay (LoS) and hospital quality, as measured by 28-day emergency readmission. We estimate regression models to analyse LoS and other factors associated with readmission for all those admitted for hip replacement (n=496,334), hernia repair (n=413,712) or following a stroke (n=480,113) in England between 2002/3 and 2007/8. There were reductions in LoS over time while changes in crude readmission rates varied by condition. Given the high mortality rate for stroke, it is critical to account for the probability of surviving the initial admission when evaluating readmissions. Conditional upon survival, the probability of readmission was greater for stroke patients who originally had a shorter LoS and for hernia patients who had an overnight stay but there is no relationship between LoS and readmission for patients who had hip replacement. The evidence does not generally suggest that reductions in LoS were associated with an increased probability of emergency readmission. Keywords: English hospitals; Length of stay; Readmissions; In-hospital mortality; Quicker and sicker (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:120:y:2016:i:1:p:89-99 DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2015.11.003 Access Statistics for this article Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier |
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