NEWBORN LENGTH OF STAY AND HOSPITAL READMISSION: DO SHORTER STAYS LEAD TO HIGHER READMISSION RATES? ▴ 1596

The practice of earlier hospital discharge of newborns delivered vaginally is raising concerns about the safety of shorter newborn hospital stays. To assess the relationship between newborn length of stay (LOS) and adverse events following discharge, we compared rehospitalization rates of vaginally delivered infants by their newborn LOS. We used 1994 data from the S. California Region, Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program to identify a cohort of vaginally delivered infants. Of the 17,612 infants initially identified, we selected singleton, live-birth infants >2500 grams, excluding those with a disposition of death, transfer or AMA discharge. Our study sample was 14,041 newborns. We calculated birth LOS in hours and, to better reflect the periodicity of discharge activity, grouped them into six-hour intervals, which became our unit of comparison. Our outcome measure was hospital readmission within four weeks of newborn discharge. CONCLUSION: We found no significant differences in readmission rates between newborns discharged early and those discharged later, and conclude that newborns discharged early had similar readmission rates to those discharged later.Table

Table 1

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