Les réadmissions évitables des « pneumopathies communautaires » : utilité et fiabilité d’un indicateur de la qualité du parcours de soins du patient

Summary Unlike Anglo-Saxon countries, the rate of preventable readmissions is not a national quality indicator in France. In the context of the European research project Performance Assessment Tool for quality improvement in Hospitals (PATH), this pilot study provides a tool for health professionals to more easily identify preventable readmissions in order to analyze their causes. The objective of this work was to show the reliability of this tool. Methods We compared the rate of preventable readmissions occurring within 30 days, for a given disease, collected by analyzing medical reports (the gold standard rate of this study) to the rates of preventable readmissions occurring within 30 days, measured from algorithms using data from the French Programme of Medicalization of Information Systems (PMSI). The data were derived from PMSI data of the Lariboisiere-Fernand-Widal Hospital, a university hospital in Paris. Results The community-acquired pneumonia gold standard rate of preventable readmissions occurring within 30 days was 6.3 %. Five algorithmic tools were used and measured rates between 2.9 % and 7.9 %. The positive likelihood ratios of these tools range from 8 to 308. Conclusion This work presents a tool aimed at the health professionals that takes into account the diversity and complexity of the causes of avoidable readmissions, resulting from the quality of medical practice, the variability of the organization of hospital pathways and the links with ambulatory care.