Are hospital readmission rates associated with mortality rates for patients hospitalized with acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, or pneumonia?
Hospital readmission rates are not a reliable proxy for mortality rates in patients with acute myocardial infarction or pneumonia, and only weakly so for heart failure.
Risk-standardized mortality rates and readmission rates were not associated for patients admitted with an acute myocardial infarction or pneumonia and were only weakly associated, within a certain range, for patients admitted with heart failure.
Krumholz et al. (2013) studied this question.