AHRQ Infographics for Public Education - Hospital Readmissions

​Dr. Ramesh Sachdeva holds numerous titles with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), including associate executive director. In addition to his many responsibilities at the AAP, Dr. Ramesh Sachdeva has served as a principal investigator for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) since 2011.

The AHRQ strives to improve the safety, quality, and affordability of health care through the production of research-based evidence. One of the many informative offerings on their website is a collection of infographics that share trend data related to health care fields in an accessible manner. One image graphs the readmission rates of patients suffering from psychiatric conditions. This data was compiled based on an AHRQ study by the agency’s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project.

Compared to the 4 percent readmission rate for non-mental-health concerns, in 2012 those with mood disorders were readmitted almost one tenth of the time, and 16 percent of schizophrenic patients were readmitted. For the group of individuals with one of these two disorders, these percentages translated to more than 1.2 million hospital stays that year.

Despite these comparatively high percentages, many more patients with physical ailments receive home care following discharge (14 percent) than do those with psychiatric conditions (only one or two percent). When patients are readmitted to the hospital, they are not only subjected to additional high costs but also face serious disruption in their home lives.                             

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