Proportion of hospital readmissions deemed avoidable: a systematic review

Readmissions to hospital are increasingly being used as an indicator of quality of care. However, this approach is valid only when we know what proportion of readmissions are avoidable. We conducted a systematic review of studies that measured the proportion of readmissions deemed avoidable. We examined how such readmissions were measured and estimated their prevalence.

We searched the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases to identify all studies published from 1966 to July 2010 that reviewed hospital readmissions and that specified how many were classified as avoidable.