Characterization, Categorization, and 5-Year Mortality of Medicine High Utilizer Inpatients:

Background:Patients who are frequently admitted to Medicine inpatient services comprise a distinct subset of readmitted patients about whom not much is known.Objective:We sought to characterize this group including mortality rates, with the goal of better understanding this population.Design:Observational study of frequently hospitalized patients defined as 4 or more admissions over a 6-month period, with hospitalization defined as nonelective admission to the hospital.Setting:Single large academic medical center.Patients:Adult inpatients on general medicine and medicine subspecialty services.Measurements:The number of nonelective medicine hospitalizations, age, clinical conditions and comorbidities, calculation of an age-adjusted Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI), outpatient and emergency department visits, length of stay, costs of hospitalization, and mortality over a 5-year period. Descriptive statistics were used to characterize variables of interest.Results:We identified 153 patients with a total of 7...