Timing of 30-Day Hospital Readmission Risk and Its Implications for Clinical Utility.

IMPORTANCE

Thirty-day hospital readmission is used to guide postdischarge care; however, a single binary 30-day estimate does not distinguish when risk occurs from when intervention is most actionable, with implications for allocation of postdischarge resources.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate time-structured hospital readmission risk within 30 days after discharge and implications for clinical utility.

DESIGN, SETTING, AND

PARTICIPANTS

Retrospective prognostic study of adults with hospital discharges from 2017 to 2024 (from 19 hospitals within a US health system for the development cohort) and 2008 to 2019 (from Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care IV for the external cohort) with 30-day follow-up. Analyses were conducted from November 2025 through June 2026.

EXPOSURE: Postdischarge prediction window, including landmark intervals of 0 to 7, 8 to 14, 15 to 21, and 22 to 30 days and cumulative horizons through days 7, 14, 21, and 30 after discharge.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: First all-cause hospital readmission before death during each landmark interval and by each cumulative horizon. Risk estimates were derived using clinical information available at hospital discharge. Performance was assessed using discrimination, calibration, decision curves, and capacity-constrained analyses.

RESULTS

Among 617 841 discharges in the development cohort, the median (IQR) patient age was 65 (50-76) years, and 315 220 discharges (51.0%) occurred among female patients. The 30-day readmission rate was 16.3% (95% CI, 16.2%-16.5%), with 68 797 readmissions (68.2%) occurring within 14 days. Cumulative-horizon analyses characterized readmission risk through days 7, 14, 21, and 30, whereas landmark interval-specific analyses showed lower positive predictive values (PPVs) beyond day 7. At 5% intervention capacity, landmark PPVs were 58.3% (95% CI, 57.4%-59.1%) for days 0 to 7, 16.0% (95% CI, 15.5%-16.6%) for days 8 to 14, 14.5% (95% CI, 13.9%-15.0%) for days 15 to 21, and 12.9% (95% CI, 12.4% to 13.5%) for days 22 to 30; numbers needed to prevent 1 readmission were 8.6, 31.3, 34.6, and 38.6, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: In this prognostic study of adult hospital discharges, hospital readmission risk varied over time and was not captured by a single binary 30-day estimate. These findings suggest that time-structured readmission modeling can characterize when readmission risk occurs, but additional work is needed before such models can reliably guide interventions during specific postdischarge intervals.