ArticleHealth affairs (Project Hope)2016
Rethinking Thirty-Day Hospital Readmissions: Shorter Intervals Might Be Better Indicators Of Quality Of Care.
Article in Health affairs (Project Hope), 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 62 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
62 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Applicability of predictive models for 30-day unplanned hospital readmission risk in paediatrics: a systematic review.BMJ open · 2022Pooled it
- Prevalence and Nature of Medication Errors and Medication-Related Harm Following Discharge from Hospital to Community Settings: A Systematic Review.Drug safety · 2020Pooled it
- Hospital Readmissions and Mortality Among Fee-for-Service Medicare Patients With Minor Stroke or Transient Ischemic Attack: Findings From the COMPASS Cluster-Randomized Pragmatic Trial.Journal of the American Heart Association · 2021Trial
- Effects of a Transitional Care Practice for a Vulnerable Population: a Pragmatic, Randomized Comparative Effectiveness Trial.Journal of general internal medicine · 2019Trial
- Language Serving Hospitals and Their Impact on Readmission for Surgical Patients With a Non-English Primary Language: A Retrospective Cohort Study.Annals of surgery · 2026Article
- Refining postoperative quality metrics: risk factors for emergency department visits within 3 days after hemorrhoidectomy.Perioperative medicine (London, England) · 2025Article
- Article
- Nurse Work Environment and Hospital Readmission Disparities Between Patients With and Without Limited English Proficiency.Research in nursing & health · 2025Article
- Racial disparities in law enforcement/court-ordered psychiatric inpatient admissions after the 2008 recession: a test of the frustration-aggression-displacement hypothesis.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2025Article
- Hospital-Level Variation in COVID-19 Treatment Among Hospitalized Adults in the United States: A Retrospective Cohort Study.Medical care · 2025Article
- Readmission Rates Among Acute Reperfusion Treatment Modalities for Patients With Ischemic Stroke.The Neurohospitalist · 2024Article
- Inpatient midwifery staffing levels and postpartum readmissions: a retrospective multicentre longitudinal study.BMJ open · 2024Article
- The role of targeted temperature management in 30-day hospital readmissions in cardiac arrest survivors: A national population-based study.International journal of cardiology. Heart & vasculature · 2023Article
- Predicting Hospital Readmissions in a Commercially Insured Population over Varying Time Horizons.Journal of general internal medicine · 2023Article
- Nurse Education and Hospital Readmissions for Children With and Without a Mental Health Condition.Hospital pediatrics · 2023Article
- Predicting the risk of hospital readmissions using a machine learning approach: a case study on patients undergoing skin procedures.Frontiers in artificial intelligence · 2023Article
- Readmission Within the First Day of Discharge Is Painful: Experience From an Australian General Surgical Service.Cureus · 2022Article
- An explanatory machine learning framework for studying pandemics: The case of COVID-19 emergency department readmissions.Decision support systems · 2022Article
- Predicting and Validating 30-day Hospital Readmission in Adults With Diabetes Whose Index Admission Is Diabetes-related.The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism · 2022Article
- Leveraging Advanced Data Analytics to Predict the Risk of All-Cause Seven-Day Emergency Readmissions.Cureus · 2022Article
2 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Public reporting and payment programs in the United States have embraced thirty-day readmissions as an indicator of between-hospital variation in the quality of care, despite limited evidence supporting this interval. We examined risk-standardized thirty-day risk of unplanned inpatient readmission at the hospital level for Medicare patients ages sixty-five and older in four states and for three conditions: acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia. The hospital-level quality signal captured in readmission risk was highest on the first day after discharge and declined rapidly until it reached a nadir at seven days, as indicated by a decreasing intracluster correlation coefficient. Similar patterns were seen across states and diagnoses. The rapid decay in the quality signal suggests that most readmissions after the seventh day postdischarge were explained by community- and household-level factors beyond hospitals' control. Shorter intervals of seven or fewer days might improve the accuracy and equity of readmissions as a measure of hospital quality for public accountability.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.