Patients with Sickle Cell Disease Are Readmitted Often

Rehospitalization within 30 days is a clinical indicator of quality of care for a variety of conditions, including sickle cell disease. Because patients with sickle cell disease experience frequent bouts of vaso-occlusive crisis, they access the healthcare system often, but previous small studies have focused on highly selected cohorts and have not generated rates of bounce-back admissions for the overall group.

Researchers performed a retrospective cohort study of acute care use in 21,112 patients with sickle cell disease from eight geographically dispersed states during 2 years. More than 100,000 acute care encounters (58% hospitalizations and 42% treat-and-release emergency department visits) occurred, for an average of 2.6 encounters per…