ArticleScientific reports2025
Prediction of 30-day unplanned hospital readmission among elderly patients using patient and ward level factors.
Article in Scientific reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Hospital readmission among elderly patients in sub-Saharan Africa, where health systems are constrained, is a critical yet poorly understood challenge. Although patient-level risk factors are established, the role of modifiable ward-level organizational factors remains largely unexplored in this context. This study aimed to investigate the patient- and ward-level determinants of 30-day unplanned readmission among elderly Ethiopian patients. A prospective study was conducted from January 2023 to February 2025; involving 504 patients aged ≥ 65 years. Data on patient demographics, clinical characteristics, and ward-level factors were collected from medical records. A GLMM was employed to identify predictors of readmission, presenting adjusted odds ratios (aORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). The overall 30-day readmission rate was 44.8%. The GLMM revealed significant ward-level clustering, with an intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.186, indicating that 18.6% of the variation in readmission odds was attributable to differences between wards. Significant patient-level predictors included a higher Charlson Comorbidity Index (aOR 1.27, 95% CI 1.13–1.42), more previous hospitalizations (aOR 1.24, 95% CI 1.08–1.43), longer length of stay (aOR 1.05, 95% CI 1.01–1.09), and cognitive impairment (aOR 1.89, 95% CI 1.21–2.94). Being discharged from a ward with a standardized discharge protocol was associated with a 45% lower odd of readmission (aOR 0.55, 95% CI 0.32–0.94). A significant cross-level interaction showed that this protective effect was strongest for patients with cognitive impairment. In this setting, readmission is driven by a combination of patient-level clinical vulnerability and ward-level organizational capacity. The substantial ward-level variation highlights a key opportunity for intervention. The implementation of discharge protocols represents a powerful, low-cost strategy to significantly reduce readmissions, particularly for the most vulnerable elderly patients with cognitive impairment, thereby improving the quality of care in resource-limited hospitals.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.