A recent Canadian Institute for Health Information report on all-cause readmission identified that cancer patients had higher-than-average readmission rates. This study provides further insight on the experience of cancer patients, exploring the risk factors associated with readmission at patient, hospital and community levels. An analysis showed that patient characteristics, including the reason for initial hospitalization, sex, co-morbidity levels, admission through the emergency department and the number of previous acute care admissions, were associated with readmission for cancer patients. In addition, we found that the readmission rate for these patients varied by hospital size and whether the patients lived in rural or urban locations.
Patients with cancer admitted to the hospital on weekends/holidays experience higher mortality relative to patients admitted on weekdays. This may result from different care processes for weekend/holiday patients, including delayed procedures. Future research is needed to identify key outcome-driving procedures, and ensure timely access to these on all days of the week.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.