Document Type
Article
Original Publication Date
2014
Journal/Book/Conference Title
BioMed Research International
Volume
2014
Issue
Article ID 781670, 11 pages
DOI of Original Publication
10.1155/2014/781670
Date of Submission
August 2014
Abstract
Management of hyperglycemia in hospitalized patients has a significant bearing on outcome, in terms of both morbidity and mortality. However, there are few national assessments of diabetes care during hospitalization which could serve as a baseline for change. This analysis of a large clinical database (74 million unique encounters corresponding to 17 million unique patients) was undertaken to provide such an assessment and to find future directions which might lead to improvements in patient safety. Almost 70,000 inpatient diabetes encounters were identified with sufficient detail for analysis. Multivariable logistic regression was used to fit the relationship between the measurement of HbA1c and early readmission while controlling for covariates such as demographics, severity and type of the disease, and type of admission. Results show that the measurement of HbA1c was performed infrequently (18.4%) in the inpatient setting. The statistical model suggests that the relationship between the probability of readmission and the HbA1c measurement depends on the primary diagnosis. The data suggest further that the greater attention to diabetes reflected in HbA1c determination may improve patient outcomes and lower cost of inpatient care.
Rights
Copyright © 2014 Beata Strack et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Is Part Of
VCU Computer Science Publications
Dataset as described in Sections 2.1 and 2.2 and in Table 1
Comments
Originally published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/781670