Journal of the American Medical Association

January 4, 2012 - An article in today’s edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) compares readmission rates of 5745 heart attack patients in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and 13 European countries. It concludes that patients in the U.S. are more likely to be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge than any of the others, specifically 14% of American patients versus 9% of all other patients were readmitted. The second strongest predictor of readmission after an acute heart episode was that the patient was in the United States.