Unplanned readmission rate within 4 weeks after discharge

Metric definition

This is the percentage of patients who were unscheduled to be readmitted to the hospital due to serious conditions within four weeks of discharged patients. Serious conditions include impaired consciousness or coma, respiratory failure or heart failure, and conditions requiring emergency surgery. If this index is high, it can be assumed that the treatment at the time of hospitalization was insufficient, or that the patient was discharged without sufficient recovery. Hospitals that accept many emergency patients tend to have high numbers, but it is desirable to have a low unplanned readmission rate.

Features of our hospital

Our hospital's unplanned readmission rate within 4 weeks after discharge is 2.6%.

Our hospital is a critical care center, and we accept 5,121 emergency inpatients a year (2022), mainly in the southern and western regions of the prefecture.In addition, as a critical care center, our medical policy is to ask patients who have passed the acute stage and are in a stable condition to be discharged or transferred to another hospital as soon as possible.

In FY2022, just as in FY2021, the spread of the new coronavirus infection will continue, and patients who have been discharged from the hospital will contract the coronavirus and their comorbidities will worsen. Additionally, there was an increase in patients who developed new illnesses and were readmitted to the hospital, as well as in elderly patients with heart failure, pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and urinary tract infections.
However, this result is lower than the median of 2.8% among participating facilities. Based on these results, it can be said that our hospital provides appropriate treatment to hospitalized patients, and that patients are discharged after making a proper recovery.

* "Median" is the value in the middle when numerical data is sorted in order of magnitude.
Numerical data here refers to the index values ​​of facilities participating in the Japan Hospital Association QI Project.
Compared to the median value of the 2023 QI Project Results Report published in October 10.

Method of calculation

Numerator Number of patients with unplanned readmission within 4 weeks of previous discharge
Denominator Number of discharged patients