While the 30-day hospital readmission rate for children between the ages of 1 and 17 was essentially stable between 2009 (5.5 percent) and 2014 (5.9 percent), the most common reasons for readmissions changed, according to an AHRQ analysis in Academic Pediatrics. For example, while sickle cell anemia was the most common reason for readmission in 2009, epilepsy was the most common reason in 2014, researchers found. While pneumonia was the second most common reason for hospital readmissions in 2009, it was the sixth most common in 2014. And while septicemia was not a leading cause of readmissions in 2009, it was among the top 10 in 2014. These and other findings were based on data from AHRQ’s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project’s Nationwide Readmissions Database. The report provides baseline information to further explore ways to reduce unplanned readmissions, authors noted.
Read more: