Do all-cause revisit rates reflect the quality of pediatric surgical care provided during index encounters?

Abstract Purpose The purpose of this study was to compare the relatedness of revisits to the index surgical encounter across different pediatric surgical procedures and to explore whether all-cause revisit rates are an accurate surrogate measure for related revisits in this cohort of children. Methods We reviewed all-cause revisits occurring within ninety days of the thirty most commonly performed pediatric surgical procedures at 44 childrenu0027s hospitals between 1/1/2012 and 3/31/2015. For each condition, a team of four surgeons reviewed revisit diagnoses and reached consensus around relatedness to the index surgical encounter. Chi-squared tests were used to test for variation in all-cause and related revisits among procedures. Spearmanu0027s correlation coefficient was used to measure the association between rankings of procedures by their all-cause and related revisit rates. Results 144,535 index encounters were analyzed with an overall revisit rate of 15.0% (21,732). Significant variation was found in both the rates of all-cause revisits among procedures (ranges: 7.6–68.4%, p Conclusions The relative proportion of revisits related to the index encounter varies significantly across pediatric surgical conditions, and poor correlation exists at the procedure-level between all-cause and related revisits rates. Level of evidence IV.