i-Mirror: Identifying ModifIable Risk factoRs for hOspital Readmission

Hospital readmissions are common and costly, and significantly influences patient quality of life and increases morbidity. Although some hospital readmissions cannot be avoided, about a third of readmissions are potentially avoidable.  Effective interventions to prevent these readmissions exist; however, these are often expensive to implement particularly in a resource limited setting. Identifying patients who are at high risk of potentially avoidable readmissions can help target patients who are most likely to benefit and streamline health services delivery. Models to predict risk of hospital readmission exist internationally; however, most of these rely on readily available hospital data such as history of hospitalisation, age, ethnicity and medical comorbidity – factors that cannot be modified to change readmission risk. Few models consider modifiable risk factors such as social determinants of health and polypharmacy, and none consider patient health beliefs – a factor that could potentially contribute to hospital readmissions.

This project aims to identify modifiable and non-modifiable factors, which are associated with potentially avoidable hospital readmissions based on patient and health professional interviews, medical notes review and on published literature, to inform the future development of a hospital readmission risk prediction model.