Brief Report: Trends in Hospital Readmissions Among Adults With and Without HIV in the United States, 2010-2020.

Background: Although 30-day hospital readmission is a widely followed quality measure, there are limited US nationwide data to evaluate its trends among people with HIV (PWH) and the sex disparity over time. We describe the 30-day all-cause unplanned readmission trends among PWH and people without HIV (PWoH) in the United States.

Setting: Adult participants in the 2010-2020 Nationwide Readmissions Database, which weighted represents all US hospitalizations each year.

Methods: We defined index admission and unplanned readmission using the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services criteria. Overall and sex-specific readmission risks were tabulated among the index admissions from adult PWH and PWoH each year in the 2010-2020 Nationwide Readmissions Database. Random effect linear and Poisson regressions were used to estimate risk difference and annual percentage change of the trend. We added a spline in 2015 and additionally stratified the analysis by age and patient's zip code median household income. All analyses were weighted to generate national estimates.

Results: Approximately 140,000 index admissions from PWH and 25 million from PWoH were included each year. For PWoH between 2010 and 2020, annual readmission risk was stable at ∼12%. For PWH, readmission risk was stable at ∼22% during 2010-2015 and decreased from 22.0% in 2016 to 20.1% in 2020 (RD= -1.60 [95% CI: -2.24,-0.95]). Nonpregnant female PWH continued to have higher readmission risk than male PWH for all subgroups and all years. Nonpregnant female PWH <40 years had no reduction in readmission risk between 2016 and 2020 (RD= -0.45 [95% CI: -2.43, 1.53]).

Conclusions: There remains strong need for readmission reduction interventions focusing on PWH, especially for young female PWH.