A pilot study available in clinical diabetes & Endocrinology shows that patients suffering from diabetes have got higher chances of being readmitted in the hospital in comparison to persons without diabetes.

Research on various dataset

A group of researchers from Michigan University in Ann Arbor carried out two studies using various datasets. The 1st entailed a retrospective/fair review of every patient that was admitted (n=7763) to adult service in Michigan University Health System having undergone a secondary or principal admission diabetes diagnosis after which an uncontrolled examination of the patients with principal admission diabetes diagnosis. However, the 2nd analysis was a wider retrospective study (n=37,702) of the total adults that had been discharged from Michigan University Health System with a secondary or principal discharge diabetes diagnosis.

The 1st study had a readmission rate of 26% among diabetes patients in comparison to 22% among the patients that were free from diabetes. For the patients with a secondary diagnosis of diabetes, the main reason for their readmission was related to an infection while the main reason for readmission was linked to diabetes for the patients with a principal diagnosis.

About 12% of patients suffering from diabetes were given any kind of service consult for diabetes, for instance, Endocrine Consults (ENDO) or Hyperglycemic Intensive Insulin program (HIIP). The patients who got access to diabetes service proved to have lower emergency & observation readmissions rates that is (6.6 percent ENDO or HIIP in comparison to 9.6 percent no ENDO or HHIP; P=.89)

Diabetes services seemed to have been used in exceedingly miniature population of patients suffering from diabetes and may in turn have caused lower revisits to the emergency department through the provision of improved management of robust diabetes, discharge planning & instruction. The researchers stated that “Their contribution on readmission in regard to prospective studies ought to be analyzed”

What were the limitations of the above study?

The nature of the study was retrospective; where the data of the patient was drawn from chart review and data warehouse.

For the patients who seemed to know diabetes without a diabetes billing diagnosis, they were excluded and thus not every diabetic patient was captured making the study inefficient. The study would have been more effective if only it employed a strategy to capture every patient.

There were two consult groups for diabetes and that is ENDO & HIIP, which administered service to distinct patient population.

Furthermore, the data used in the study was only gathered from a single academic institution thus it would be unfair to generalize the results to patients all over the globe. This is because patients differ. However, if the study used data from a number of institutions, chances are that they would have come up with an all-inclusive conclusion.

To sum it up, not that the researchers involved in this study labored in vain. Absolutely not! However, they may not have covered everything, but at least they shed some light on the relation between diabetes and hospital readmissions. If you have a diabetic patient at home, you need to have first aid certification in case they need to be readmitted sooner than later.