Development and Validation of a Web-Based Pediatric Readmission Risk Assessment Tool

OBJECTIVES: Accurately predicting and reducing risk of unplanned readmissions (URs) in pediatric care remains difficult. We sought to develop a set of accurate algorithms to predict URs within 3, 7, and 30 days of discharge from inpatient admission that can be used before the patient is discharged from a current hospital stay.

METHODS: We used the Children’s Hospital Association Pediatric Health Information System to identify a large retrospective cohort of 1 111 323 children with 1 321 376 admissions admitted to inpatient care at least once between January 1, 2016, and December 31, 2017. We used gradient boosting trees (XGBoost) to accommodate complex interactions between these predictors.

RESULTS: In the full cohort, 1.6% of patients had at least 1 UR in 3 days, 2.4% had at least 1 UR in 7 days, and 4.4% had at least 1 UR within 30 days. Prediction model discrimination was strongest for URs within 30 days (area under the curve [AUC] = 0.811; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.808–0.814) and was nearly identical for UR risk prediction within 3 days (AUC = 0.771; 95% CI: 0.765–0.777) and 7 days (AUC = 0.778; 95% CI: 0.773–0.782), respectively. Using these prediction models, we developed a publicly available pediatric readmission risk scores prediction tool that can be used before or during discharge planning.

CONCLUSIONS: Risk of pediatric UR can be predicted with information known before the patient’s discharge and that is easily extracted in many electronic medical record systems. This information can be used to predict risk of readmission to support hospital-discharge–planning resources.