Association of Early and Late Hospital Readmissions with a Novel Housing-Based Socioeconomic Measure.

Background: While socioeconomic status has been linked to hospital readmissions for several conditions, reliable measures of individual socioeconomic status are often not available. HOUSES, a new measure of individual socioeconomic status based upon objective public data about one's housing unit, is inversely associated with overall hospitalization rate but it has not been studied with respect to readmissions.

Purpose: To determine if patients in the lowest HOUSES quartile are more likely to be readmitted within 30 days (short-term) and 180 days (long-term).