The association between outpatient follow-up visits and all-cause non-elective 30-day readmissions: A retrospective observational cohort study

BackgroundAs an effort to reduce hospital readmissions, early follow-up visits were recommended by the Society of Hospital Medicine. However, published literature on the effect of follow-up visits is limited with mixed conclusions. Our goal here is to fully explore the relationship between follow-up visits and the all-cause non-elective 30-day readmission rate (RR) after adjusting for confounders.Methods and resultsTo conduct this retrospective observational study, we extracted data for 55,378 adult inpatients from Advocate Health Care, a large, multi-hospital system serving a diverse population in a major metropolitan area. These patients were discharged to Home or Home with Home Health services between June 1, 2013 and April 30, 2015. Our findings from time-dependent Cox proportional hazard models showed that follow-up visits were significantly associated with a reduced RR (adjusted hazard ratio: 0.86; 95% CI: 0.82–0.91), but in a complicated way because the interaction between follow-up visits and a readmission risk score was significant with p-value 0.334) saw no RR reduction from follow-up visits. Third, a patient was much more likely to have a 2-day follow-up visit if that visit was scheduled before the patient was discharged from the hospital (30% versus ConclusionsFollow-up visits are associated with a reduction in readmission risk. The timing of follow-up visits can be important: beyond two days, the earlier, the better. The effect of follow-up visits is more significant for patients with a high but not extremely high risk of readmission.