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Avoidable hospital readmissions

Categories: Hidden Newsletter Articles | Author: Jovin Synott | Posted: 30/08/2019 | Views: 1326
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The Health Roundtable have been reporting 28-day unplanned readmissions, a key performance measure of quality. It is measuring the volume and rate of patients who require emergency readmission to the hospital within 28 days of previous discharge. 
From a quality perspective, our members recognise the importance of monitoring this measure as it gives an indication of the management of the patient while an inpatient, including the robustness of their discharge policies and guidelines and the capability of the wider health ecosystem to keep patients in a community setting. Hence, keeping on top of your unplanned readmissions helps the whole of the healthcare system to function better for health care users.

According to the Australian Commission on Quality and Safety in Healthcare (ACQSH): "Reducing avoidable hospital readmissions supports better health outcomes, improves patient safety and leads to greater efficiency in the health system."

The concept of avoidable readmissions is being introduced into the mindset of hospitals across Australia. The intention is to differentiate between emergency readmissions to the hospital that occurs within a certain number of days from a previous discharge, but could not be clinically avoided by better in-hospital management. The classic example of unavoidable readmission is a patient who is readmitted as an emergency because of a road traffic accident.

With the intention to inform health reforms the ACQSH has issued a definition of avoidable readmission which is the following:

An avoidable hospital readmission occurs when a patient who has been discharged from hospital (index admission) is admitted again within a certain time interval, and the readmission:

- Is clinically related to the index admission, and
- Has the potential to be avoided through improved clinical management and/or appropriate discharge planning in the index admission.

How do you define clinically related?
These are identified by a list of conditions on admission that have been considered by the clinical and technical experts as avoidable. Click here to view the complete list of conditions.

- Find your unavoidable one as per commissions unavoidable readmission list. 

- We are taking one example. Which is XXXX — pick high volume from above

- Show limiting to those using filter for readmission principal diagnoses

- Drill in and break it down by department

- To see where opportunities to improve lie

- and then episode level for investigation 
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