Towards a patient journey perspective on causes of unplanned readmissions using a classification framework: results of a systematic review with narrative synthesis

BACKGROUND: Several literature reviews have been published focusing on the prevalence and/or preventability of hospital readmissions. To our knowledge, none focused on the different causes which have been used to evaluate the preventability of readmissions. Insight into the range of causes is crucial to understand the complex nature of readmissions. With this review we aim to: 1) evaluate the range of causes of unplanned readmissions in a patient journey, and 2) present a cause classification framework that can support future readmission studies. METHODS: A literature search was conducted in PUBMED and EMBASE using “readmission” and “avoidability” or “preventability” as key terms. Studies that specified causes of unplanned readmissions were included. The causes were classified into eight preliminary root causes: Technical, Organization (integrated care), Organization (hospital department level), Human (care provider), Human (informal caregiver), Patient (self-management), Patient (disease), and Other. The root causes were based on expert opinions and the root cause analysis tool of PRISMA (Prevention and Recovery Information System for Monitoring and Analysis). The range of different causes were analyzed using Microsoft Excel. RESULTS: Forty-five studies that reported 381 causes of readmissions were included. All studies reported causes related to organization of care at the hospital department level. These causes were often reported as preventable. Twenty-two studies included causes related to patient’s self-management and 19 studies reported causes related to patient’s disease. Studies differed in which causes were seen as preventable or unpreventable. None reported causes related to technical failures and causes due to integrated care issues were reported in 18 studies. CONCLUSIONS: This review showed that causes for readmissions were mainly evaluated from a hospital perspective. However, causes beyond the scope of the hospital can also play a major role in unplanned readmissions. Opinions regarding preventability seem to depend on contextual factors of the readmission. This study presents a cause classification framework that could help future readmission studies to gain insight into a broad range of causes for readmissions in a patient journey. In conclusion, we aimed to: 1) evaluate the range of causes for unplanned readmissions, and 2) present a cause classification framework for causes related to readmissions. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12874-019-0822-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.