Frailty Is Associated With Early Hospital Readmission in Older Medical Patients

Abstract

Given the pervasiveness of frailty and its negative effects on health care–related outcomes, we evaluated patient frailty and comorbidity and determined the relationship between these measures and the probability of early readmission and length of hospital stay. Our retrospective analysis includes 435 patients evaluated using the Reported Edmonton Frailty Scale and the Age-Adjusted Charlson Comorbidity Index. We found that frailty as measured by the Reported Edmonton Frailty Scale was a significant predictor of hospital readmission and length of stay, and frailty outperformed the explanatory power of our comorbidity metric. One unit of increase in the Reported Edmonton Frailty Scale increased the odds of readmission by a factor of 1.12 (95% confidence interval [CI]: [1.04, 1.20]), and an increase of 10 units tripled the odds of readmission (odds ratio = 3.02, 95% CI: [1.48, 6.24]). These findings underscore the importance of prompt identification and management of frailty by bedside clinicians.