Short-term adjusted outcomes for heart failure

Purpose Heart failure (HF) is recognized as a major problem in industrialized countries. Short-term adjusted outcomes are indicators of quality for care process during/after hospitalization. Our aim is to evaluate, for patients with principal diagnosis of HF, in-hospital mortality and 30-day readmissions for all-causes using two different risk adjustment (RA) tools. Methods and Results We used data from the hospital discharge abstract (HD) of a retrospective cohort of patients (2002-2007) admitted in Tuscan hospitals, Italy. Considered outcomes were in-hospital mortality and readmission at 30 days. We compared the All-Patients Refined Diagnosis Related Groups (APR-DRG) system and the Elixhauser Index (EI). Logistic regression was performed and models were compared using the C statistic (C). examined records were 58.202. Crude in-hospital mortality was 9.7%. Thirty-day readmission was 5.1%. The APR-DRG class of risk of death (ROD) was a predictive factor for in-hospital mortality; the APR-DRG class of severity was not significantly associated with 30-day readmissions (P>0.05). EI comorbidities which were more strongly associated with outcomes were nonmetastatic cancer for in-hospital mortality (odds ratio, OR 2.25, P