Hospital-level factors associated with pediatric emergency department return visits

Return Visit Rates and Hospital ED Site Population Characteristics

Twenty-four of 35 (68%) eligible hospitals that met PHIS quality control standards for ED patient visits responded to the ED medical director survey. The included hospitals that both met quality control standards and completed the survey had a total of 1,456,377 patient visits during the study period. Individual sites had annual volumes ranging from 26,627 to 96,637 ED encounters. The mean RV rate across the institutions was 3.7% (range, 3.0%-4.8%), and the mean RVA rate across the hospitals was 0.7% (range, 0.5%-1.1%) (Figure).

There were 5 hospitals with RV rates less than 2 SDs of the mean rate, placing them in the lowest outlier group for RV; 13 hospitals with RV rates within 2 SDs of the mean RV rate, placing them in the average-performing group; and 6 hospitals with RV rates above 2 SDs of the mean, placing them in the highest outlier group. Table 1 lists the hospital ED site population characteristics among the 3 RV rate groups. Hospitals in the highest outlier group served populations with higher proportions of patients with insurance from a government payer, lower proportions of patients covered by a commercial insurance plan, and higher proportion of patients with lower median household incomes.

RV Rates and Hospital-Level Factors Survey Characteristics

Table 2 lists the ED medical director survey hospital-level data among the 3 RV rate groups. There were fewer FTEs by PEM fellowship-trained physicians per 10,000 patient visits at sites with higher RV rates (Table 2). Hospital-level characteristics assessed by the survey were not associated with RVA rates (Supplemental Table 2).

Evaluating characteristics of hospitals with the most potential to gain from improvement, hospitals with the highest RV rates (highest outlier group), compared with hospitals in the lowest outlier and average-performing groups collapsed together, persisted in having fewer PEM fellowship-trained physician FTEs per patient visit (Table 3). A similar collapsed analysis of RVA rates demonstrated that hospitals in the highest outlier group had longer-wait-to-physician time (81 minutes; IQR, 51-105 minutes) compared with hospitals in the other 2 groups (30 minutes; IQR, 19-42.5 minutes) (Table 3).

Other studies have identified patient- and visit-level characteristics associated with higher ED RV and RVA rates.^3,8,9,31 However, as our goal was to identify possible modifiable institutional features, our study examined factors at hospital and population-served levels (instead of patient or visit level) that may impact ED RV and RVA rates. Interestingly, our sample of tertiary-care pediatric center EDs provided evidence of variability in RV and RVA rates. We identified factors associated with RV rates related to the SDHs of the populations served by the ED, which suggests these factors are not modifiable at an institution level. In addition, we found that the increased availability of PEM providers per patient visit correlated with fewer ED RVs.

Hospitals serving ED populations with more government-insured and fewer commercially insured patients had higher rates of return to the ED. Similarly, hospitals with larger proportions of patients from areas with lower median household incomes had higher RV rates. These factors may indicate that patients with limited resources may have more frequent ED RVs,^3,6,32,33 and hospitals that serve them have higher ED RV rates. Our findings complement those of a recent study by Sills et al.,¹¹ who evaluated hospital readmissions and proposed risk adjustment for performance reimbursement. This study found that hospital population-level race, ethnicity, insurance status, and household income were predictors of hospital readmission after discharge.

Of note, our data did not identify similar site-level attributes related to the population served that correlated with RVA rates. We postulate that the need for admission on RV may indicate an inherent clinical urgency or medical need associated with the return to the ED, whereas RV without admission may be related more to patient- or population-level sociodemographic factors than to quality of care and clinical course, which influence ED utilization.^1,3,30 EDs treating higher proportions of patients of minority race or ethnicity, those with fewer financial resources, and those in more need of government health insurance are at higher risk for ED revisits.

We observed that increased PEM fellowship-trained physician staffing was associated with decreased RV rates. The availability of specialty-trained physicians in PEM may allow a larger proportion of patients treated by physicians with honed clinical skills for the patient population. Data from a single pediatric center showed PEM fellowship-trained physicians had admission rates lower than those of their counterparts without subspecialty fellowship training.³⁴ The lower RV rate for this group in our study is especially interesting in light of previously reported lower admission rates at index visit in PEM trained physicians. With lower index admission rates, it may have been assumed that visits associated with PEM trained physician care would have an increased (rather than decreased) chance of RV. In addition, we noted the increased RVA rates were associated with longer waits to see a physician. These measures may indicate the effect of institutional access to robust resources (the ability to hire and support more specialty-trained physicians). These novel findings warrant further evaluation, particularly as our sample included only pediatric centers.

Our survey data demonstrated the impact that access to care has on ED RV rates. The ED medical directors indicated that limited access to outpatient appointments with PCPs and specialists was an important factor increasing ED RVs and a potential avenue for interventions. As the 2 open-ended questions addressed barriers and potential solutions, it is interesting that the respondents cited access to care and discharge instructions as the largest barriers and identified innovations in access to care and discharge education as important potential remedies.

This study demonstrated that, at the hospital level, ED RV quality measures are influenced by complex and varied SDHs that primarily reflect the characteristics of the patient populations served. Prior work has similarly highlighted the importance of gaining a rigorous understanding of other quality measures before widespread use, reporting, and dissemination of results.^11,35-38 With this in mind, as quality measures are developed and implemented, care should be taken to ensure they accurately and appropriately reflect the quality of care provided to the patient and are not more representative of other factors not directly within institutional control. These findings call into question the usefulness of ED RVs as a quality measure for comparing institutions.