STATISTICAL BRIEF #304 September 2023 H. Joanna Jiang, Ph.D., and Molly Hensche, M.S.

https://hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb304-readmissions-2016-2020.jsp Highlights From 2016 to 2020, the 30-day all-cause hospital readmission rate remained at 13.9 per 100 index admissions. But the number of readmissions decreased by 10 percent in 2020 compared with 2016-2019. In 2020, the highest readmission rates by expected payer and age were for hospital stays among patients aged 21-64 years with an expected payer of Medicare and nonmaternal patients aged 45-64 years with an expected payer of Medicaid (21.4 and 19.7 per 100 index admissions, respectively). In 2020, the readmission rate by race/ethnicity was highest among non-Hispanic Black patients and lowest among non-Hispanic Asian/Pacific Islander patients (16.0 vs. 11.7 per 100 index admissions). By diagnosis, hospital stays for blood diseases had the highest readmission rate in 2020 (23.8 per 100 index admissions), followed by stays for neoplasms (19.0 per 100 index admissions). In 2020, circulatory system diseases accounted for the largest share of all readmissions by condition (16.8 percent), followed by infectious and parasitic diseases (12.4 percent) and digestive system diseases (11.6 percent). On average, the cost of readmissions in 2020 was 12.4 percent higher than the cost of index admissions ($16,300 vs. $14,500).