Background: Readmission is widely used as a quality metric to assess hospital performance. However, different methods to calculate readmissions may produce various results, leading to differences in classification with respect to hospital performance. This study compared 2 commonly used approaches to measure surgical readmissions: the 30-day all-cause hospital-wide readmissions (HWRs) and the potentially preventable readmissions (PPRs).
Methods: We examined the correlation between hospitals' risk-adjusted HWR and PPR rates and whether there was agreement in categorizing hospital performance between these measures among 111 hospitals with inpatient surgical programs in the Veterans Health Administration.
Results: We found that hospitals' HWR and PPR rates were highly correlated (r = .85, P < .0001). The overall agreement between these 2 methods in categorizing hospital performance was 82% for all surgeries, 82% for colectomy, 84% for coronary bypass, and 87% for hip/knee replacement, respectively.
Conclusions: Despite differences in methodologies, the HWR and the PPR measures provided relatively consistent perceptions of hospitals' performance on surgical readmissions.
Keywords: 30-Day all-cause hospital-wide readmissions; Administrative data; Potentially preventable readmissions; Surgical readmissions; Veterans Health Administration.
Published by Elsevier Inc.