Variation in Surgical-Readmission Rates and Quality of Hospital Care

Reducing hospital-readmission rates is a clinical and policy priority, but little is known about variation in rates of readmission after major surgery and whether these rates at a given hospital are related to other markers of the quality of surgical care.

Using national Medicare data, we calculated 30-day readmission rates after hospitalization for coronary-artery bypass grafting, pulmonary lobectomy, endovascular repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm, open repair of abdominal aortic aneurysm, colectomy, and hip replacement. We used bivariate and multivariate techniques to assess the relationships between readmission rates and other measures of surgical quality, including adherence to surgical process measures, procedure volume, and mortality.