A new study, published in JAMA Cardiology, examined the association between hospital transcatheter aortic valve replacement volume at a hospital and 30-day readmission rate.
For the observational study, researchers used the 2014 Nationwide Readmissions Database to identify hospitals with established TAVR programs, that is, performing at least five TAVRs in the first quarter of 2014.
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The researchers classified hospitals as having low TAVR volume (less than 50 procedures); medium volume (between 50 and 100 procedures) and high volume (more than 100 procedures). They analyzed the data from November to December 2016. The study included 129 hospitals, of which researchers categorized 20 as low volume, 47 as medium volume and 62 as high volume.
Of the 16,252 TAVR procedures performed at all the hospitals, 663 were performed at low-volume hospitals; 3,067 at medium-volume hospitals; and 12,522 at high-volume hospitals.
The study shows that 30-day readmission rates were significantly lower in high-volume compared with medium-volume and low-volume hospitals. Readmissions for non-cardiac events were more common in low-volume hospitals, whereas cardiac readmissions were more common in high-volume hospitals.
There were no significant differences in length-of-stay and costs per readmission among the three groups.