RESEARCH ARTICLE Thirty-Day Readmission Rates in Orthopedics: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Background Hospital readmission rates are being used to evaluate performance. A survey of the present rates is needed before policies can be developed to decrease incidence of readmission. We address three questions: What is the present rate of 30-day readmission in orthope-dics? How do factors such as orthopedic specialty, data source, patient insurance, and time of data collection affect the 30-day readmission rate? What are the causes and risk factors for 30-day readmissions? Methods/Findings A review was first registered with Prospero (CRD42014010293, 6/17/2014) and a meta-analysis was performed to assess the current 30-day readmission rate in orthopedics. Stud-ies published after 2006 were retrieved, and 24 studies met the inclusion criteria. The 30-day readmission rate was extrapolated from each study along with the orthopedic subspe-cialty, data source, patient insurance, time of collection, patient demographics, and cause of readmission. A sensitivity analysis was completed on the stratified groups. The overal