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Timely discharge summaries might be a marker of care quality, and earlier summary completion could prevent hospital readmissions by providing necessary timely information to outpatient providers. In this retrospective cohort of nearly 88,000 consecutive hospital discharges at a single tertiary care teaching hospital, researchers evaluated whether the speed of completing hospital discharge summaries was associated with 30-day readmissions statewide. Readmission rates were adjusted for patient age, sex, race, payer, hospital service, discharge location, length of stay, a comorbidity index, and a standardized diagnosis-based severity-of-illness index.
Median time to discharge summary completion was 8 days; 43% of readmissions occurred before di…