Evaluating unscheduled readmission to emergency department in the early period

Background: The readmission in the early period (RAEP) is defined as the admission of a patient to emergency department (ED) for the second time within 72 hours after discharge from the ED. Aims: The aim of this study was to determine the disease, patient, doctor, and system related causes of RAEP. Study Design: Descriptive study. Methods: This study is a two-stage study that was conducted at Department of Emergency, Gazi University Faculty of Medicine. The causes of RAEP were defined as disease, patient, doctor, and system related causes. Results: A total of 46,800 adult patients admitted to ED during the study period and 779 (1.66%) patients required RAEP. After the exclusion criteria, 429 of these patients were included the study. The most common reasons for RAEP were renal colic in 46 (10.7%) patients. It was detected that 60.4% of the causes of RAEP were related to disease, 20.0% were related to the doctor, 12.1% were related to the patient, and 7.5% were related to the hospital management system. Conclusion: This study revealed that there are patient-, doctor-, and system-related preventable reasons for RAEP and the patients requiring RAEP constitute the high risk group. © 2016 Trakya University Faculty of Medicine