Even as hospitals  try to reduce readmissions to follow value-based payment models, many of the factors that cause higher readmission rates are location-related and therefore out of hospitals’ control.

A study in the Health Services Research journal  attributed 58 percent of the  variation in hospital 30-day readmission rates to the  demographics of the county where the hospital was located.

The biggest factors in identifying areas with higher readmission rates:  larger percentages of the population eligible for Medicare, higher numbers who had never married and “low employment designation.”

And FierceHealthcare, in its analysis of the research, noted:”One of the most crucial health-system variables that determines the rate of readmissions is the number of general practitioners in the community, primarily because patients in areas with fewer general practitioners have few options but to return to the hospital when they experience complications….”