All-Cause Hospital Readmissions among Non-Elderly Medicaid Patients, 2007

Excerpt

This Statistical Brief presents data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) on all-cause readmissions among non-elderly Medicaid patients in 2007. HCUP data are all-payer hospital discharge data, which offer the advantage of capturing data from both FFS and managed care Medicaid enrollees, as well as comparison data for other payers. The majority of State Medicaid programs have a high percentage of managed care enrollment, and CMS and some States are missing inpatient encounter data for managed care.

For this Statistical Brief, readmission rate is defined as the percentage of patients who have at least one readmission within a certain number of days after being discharged alive from their initial hospital stay. The initial stay is the patient’s first hospital admission between January and November of 2007. Readmission rates 7, 14, and 30 days post-discharge are presented. Differences in 30-day readmission rates by patient age, gender, and presence of comorbidities are discussed. For reference, these summary statistics are also presented for patients with private insurance. In addition, readmission rates are provided for Medicaid patients by the principal diagnosis associated with the initial hospital stay. All differences between estimates noted in the text are statistically significant at the 0.05 level or better.

This report focuses on the non-elderly population only, and thus does not include individuals who are age 65 years old or above with dual coverage of Medicaid and Medicare. Readmissions are identified using encrypted unique patient numbers that enable tracking of patients across different hospitals within a state. Data are drawn from 10 states that demonstrate acceptable quality for this data element among both Medicaid and privately insured patients.