Hospital readmission after hip fracture

Introduction: Readmission to the hospital following a hip fracture is common, often involves an adverse event, and strains an already overburdened health care system.

Objectives: To assess the rate of 30-day readmission to the hospital after discharge for care of hip fracture. A secondary objective was measurement of the 30-day mortality rate for those patients readmitted versus those patients not readmitted to the hospital after discharge.

Materials and methods: Study design was a retrospective review of registry data comparing readmitted patients to those not readmitted after hip fracture. Setting was a university affiliated level 3 trauma center. Participants: 1,081 patients aged 65 and older. Measurements: rate of readmission, rate of mortality, predictors of readmission.

Results: 129 patients (11.9 %) were readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of their initial discharge date. The primary causes of readmission were surgical in nature for 24/129 (18.6 %) patients and 105/129 (81.4 %) were readmitted for medical or other reasons. Twenty-four (18.6 %) patients who were readmitted died during readmission. The one-year mortality rate for patients readmitted within 30 days was 56.2 vs. a 21.8 % 1-year mortality rate for those patients not readmitted (p < 0.0001). Independent predictors of readmission were age >85 (OR = 1.52; p = 0.03), time to surgery >24 h (OR = 1.50; p = 0.05), Charlson score ≥4 (OR = 1.70; p = 0.04), delirium (OR = 1.65; p = 0.01), dementia (OR = 1.61; p = 0.01), history of arrhythmia with pacemaker placement (OR = 1.75; p = 0.02), and presence of a pre-op arrhythmia (OR = 1.62; p = 0.02).

Conclusion: Readmission after hip fracture is harmful and undesirable—18.6 % of readmitted patients died during their readmission and the average length of stay was 8.7 days. Approximately one of every six readmissions was identified as potentially preventable with interventions.