Outcomes of care related to Hospital Death and 30-day Readmission Rates

VHI provides information on in-hospital deaths and death rates occurring during a cardiac care hospitalization. Lower death rates than what you would expect when comparing similar patients are better. VHI has excluded certain patients from this analysis including those receiving hospice care. The Methodology section provides more detail on what is excluded.

30-Day Readmission Rates are also provided. Readmission rates are important because they may reflect how complete care was during the hospital stay and whether the patient received or acted upon follow-up care during the first hospitalization.

VHI identifies whether patients are readmitted within thirty days of the original admission and calculates readmission rates. Not all readmissions are included--just those that appear to be related to the first admission. If someone was hospitalized for a medical cardiology problem and was readmitted two weeks later for medical cardiology, VHI would consider that related. If the same medical cardiology patient were readmitted after an automobile accident or for delivery of a baby, VHI would not consider that as a related readmission.

As with deaths, lower 30-day readmission rates than expected when comparing similarly ill patients are considered better. For outcome measures, VHI uses symbols to note whether death and readmission rates are less than expected, as expected, or higher than expected.