Identification of Stakeholder Priorities for Risk Prediction of Hospital Readmission and Development of a Prediction Framework

Summary

Getting readmitted to the hospital after discharge is a common issue in Canada. Canada has some of the lowest numbers of hospital beds per person compared to other countries with universal healthcare. In 2020-2021, about 9.4% of Canadian adults were readmitted within 30 days of leaving the hospital. This puts pressure on the healthcare system and costs the Canadian government around $2.3 billion each year. Current tools to predict readmissions aren’t very effective and often fail to consider marginalized groups. This problem comes from a poorly designed prediction system. We want to create a tool that can better help identify people at risk of returning to the hospital after discharge.

Our research question is: How can we best predict the risk of hospital readmissions for hospitalized adults? First, we will develop a prediction framework for our new risk-prediction tool. We will do this by engaging stakeholders, including diverse patients, caregivers, and health system leaders. We will then use this framework to create a new risk-prediction tool. Then we will test the new tool against those currently in use to see how accurate it is in different settings.

We are looking for participants to join group discussions and one-on-one interviews. These meetings will focus on their experiences with hospital readmissions in Alberta.