Almost 10% of patients
Data from the Nationwide Readmissions Database also showed that the same-cause readmission rate was 3.3% after 30 days and 7.8% within the calendar year (CY) over the 5-year study period of 2010-2014, Myron Zhang, MD, of the department of dermatology at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, and his associates reported in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
The total cost of the CY readmissions was $2.54 billion, which works out to $508 million per year or $8,995 per visit. The most common dermatologic diagnosis – cellulitis made up 83.6% of all hospitalizations – was also the most expensive in terms of readmissions, resulting in $1.9 billion in CY costs, Dr. Zhang and associates wrote.
Overall readmission rates for cellulitis were not provided, but annual rates ranged from 9.1% to 9.3% (30-day all cause), from 7.7% to 8.1% (CY same cause), and from 3.1% to 3.3% (30-day same cause), they wrote.
The dermatologic diagnosis with the highest 30-day same-cause readmission rate was vascular hamartomas at 21.1%, followed by dermatomyositis (18.3%) and thrombotic microangiopathy (13.7%). Dermatomyositis had the highest CY same-cause readmission rate (30.8%) and mycosis fungoides had the highest 30-day all-cause rate (32.3%), according to the investigators.
“Diseases, characteristics, and comorbidities associated with high readmission rates should trigger hospitals to consider dermatology consultation, coordinate outpatient follow-up, and support underinsured outpatient access. These measures have been shown to reduce readmissions or hospital visits in general dermatologic settings, but outcomes in individual diseases are not well studied,” Dr. Zhang and associates wrote. They noted that there have been “very few prior studies of readmissions for skin diseases.”
SOURCE: Zhang M et al. J Am Acad. Dermatol. 2019. doi: 10.1016/j.jaad.2019.05.023. .