Hospital re-admissions: an empirical analysis of quality management in Taiwan.

This retrospective study uses discharge-level data to analyse and assess the situation of re-admissions within 15 days of discharge, for quality evaluation. The re-admission rate of the study period was 3.22%. Among those re-admission cases, 45.7% patients were re-admitted within five days of discharge, and 33.5% cases returned to hospital six to 10 days after discharge. The average length of stays of re-admissions (9.86 days for previous stay and 8.10 days for re-admitted stay) were both longer than the hospital's overall average (7.63 days) at the same period. Paediatric patients comprised the greatest number of re-admissions. Re-admissions were more likely to have higher percentage of emergency admission. Significant relationships were found between factors for re-admissions and patient characteristics (e.g. age and insurance status), admitted department, and diagnosis. Further investigation and strategies, combined with the application of severity adjustment technique to better monitor and avoid unnecessary re-admissions, need to be developed.