Heart-Failure Readmissions: What Does the Hospitalization Diagnosis Mean?

A metric for quality of care in cardiology is 30-day readmission rate for heart failure (HF), implying that readmissions are a surrogate for suboptimal patient care. To learn more about this metric and HF diagnoses, investigators conducted a retrospective, cohort study of patients admitted into a 14-hospital healthcare system in Texas in 2012.

Patients could be included if they had a primary HF diagnosis at discharge, echocardiogram within 6 months of admission, and an assessment of B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) during admission. High probability of accurate HF diagnosis required BNP >400, systolic and/or diastolic dysfunction on echocardiogram, and x-ray findings. Low probability of accurate HF diagnosis included no recorded BNP >100, no…