Association of Hospital Discharge Against Medical Advice With Readmission and In-Hospital Mortality.

Importance: Hospital readmissions contribute to higher expenditures and may sometimes reflect suboptimal patient care. Individuals discharged against medical advice (AMA) are a vulnerable patient population and may have higher risk for readmission.

Objectives: To determine odds of readmission and mortality for patients discharged AMA vs all others, to characterize patient and hospital-level factors associated with readmissions, and to quantify their overall cost burden.

Factors Associated With Family Experience in Pediatric Inpatient Care.

Background: Hospitals are rapidly increasing efforts to improve the pediatric inpatient experience. However, hospitals often do not know what to target for improvement. To determine what matters most to families, we assessed which aspects of experience have the strongest relationships with parents' willingness to recommend a hospital.

Analysis of Readmissions Following Hospitalization for Cellulitis in the United States.

Importance: Cellulitis commonly results in hospitalization. Limited data on the proportion of cellulitis admissions associated with readmission are available.

Objective: To characterize the US national readmission rate associated with hospitalization for treatment of cellulitis.

Adverse Events and Patient Outcomes Among Hospitalized Children Cared for by General Pediatricians vs Hospitalists.

Importance: Pediatric hospital medicine is a relatively new and growing specialty. However, research remains inconclusive on outcomes for inpatients cared for by pediatric hospitalists compared with those cared for by general pediatricians.

Objective: To analyze outcomes, adverse events (AEs), and types of AEs associated with care provided for pediatric patients by hospitalists vs general pediatricians.

Readmission After Pediatric Mental Health Admissions.

Background And Objectives: Reducing readmissions is a major health care system goal. There is a gap in our understanding of pediatric readmission patterns after mental health (MH) admissions. With this study, we aimed to characterize the prevalence of readmissions after MH admissions, to identify patient-level factors and costs associated with readmissions, and to assess variation in readmission rates across hospitals.

Same-Hospital Readmission Rates as a Measure of Pediatric Quality of Care.

Importance: Health care systems, payers, and hospitals use hospital readmission rates as a measure of quality. Although hospitals can track readmissions back to themselves (hospital A to hospital A), they lack information when their patients are readmitted to different hospitals (hospital A to hospital B). Because hospitals lack different-hospital readmission (DHR) data, they may underestimate all-hospital readmission (AHR) rates (hospital A to hospital A or B).

Changes in obesity between fifth and tenth grades: a longitudinal study in three metropolitan areas.

Background: Despite epidemic childhood obesity levels, we know little about how BMI changes from preadolescence to adolescence and what factors influence changes.

Methods: We studied 3961 randomly selected public school students and 1 parent per student in 3 US metropolitan areas in fifth and again in tenth grades. In each grade, we measured child and parent height/weight and calculated BMI category.

Pediatric readmission prevalence and variability across hospitals.

Importance: Readmission rates are used as an indicator of the quality of care that patients receive during a hospital admission and after discharge.

Objective: To determine the prevalence of pediatric readmissions and the magnitude of variation in pediatric readmission rates across hospitals.

Design, Setting, And Patients: We analyzed 568,845 admissions at 72 children's hospitals between July 1, 2009, and June 30, 2010, in the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions Case Mix Comparative data set.