SAN DIEGO – Vulnerable patients experienced higher 30-day postpartum readmission rates, regardless of site of care, results from a large national analysis demonstrated.
“Although childbirth is the most common indication for inpatient admission in the United States – accounting for up to 4 million inpatient stays per year – national 30-day postpartum readmission rates, reasons for readmissions, and variation in readmission rates according to patient clinical and demographic characteristics on a national scale remain unknown,” Anju Ranjit, MD, said in an interview prior to the annual clinical and scientific meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Dr. Anju Ranjit
Dr. Ranjit, a postdoctoral research fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, and her associates used multivariable logistic regression to compare differences in 30-day readmissions among 499,578 patients treated at hospitals serving a higher proportion of vulnerable patients (safety net hospitals) with the 30-day readmissions among 877,325 patients treated at hospitals serving a higher proportion of nonvulnerable patients (non–safety net hospitals). Models were adjusted for differences in patient demographics, comorbidities, pregnancy risk-status, type of deliveries, and hospital characteristics.
The researchers included 1,374,903 deliveries in the analysis, which were weighted to represent 3,113,047 deliveries nationwide. The national 30-day postpartum readmission rate was 1.4/100 deliveries. The top three reasons for readmission were wound infection (20.8%), infection (7.7%), and hypertension-related complications (6.2%).
Dr. Ranjit reported that in 2013, a total of 724,833 (53.3%) deliveries were to vulnerable patients and the remaining 652,070 (47.4%) to nonvulnerable patients. The rate of 30-day postpartum readmissions were higher among vulnerable patients, compared with their nonvulnerable counterparts (1.52% vs. 1.18%, respectively; adjusted odds ratio, 1.31; confidence interval, 1.26-1.37) and among patients who were treated at hospitals managing a higher proportion of vulnerable patients (1.51% vs. 1.27%; adjusted OR 1.19; CI, 1.12-1.27).*
“Higher readmission rates seen among vulnerable patients across institutions speak to the need to address disparities in perinatal care,” Dr. Ranjit said. “Quality improvement interventions targeted at safety net hospitals, where the majority of vulnerable patients seek care, could be helpful in reducing readmission rates among vulnerable populations.”
She acknowledged certain limitations of study, including the use of administrative data that is subject to coding error and that lacks clinical granularity.
“We were unable to control for patient’s race and region of residence due of lack of information,” she added. “Classification of hospitals into ‘safety net’ and ‘non–safety net’ hospitals was done – based on the proportion of vulnerable patients served, as identified in the national readmissions database – for the purpose of this study only.”
Dr. Ranjit reported having no financial disclosures.
* Correction, 05/08/17: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described the patient populations.