Table 2.

Adjusted Patient Outcomes Reported on the Absolute Scale—30-day Readmission Rate, LOS, Index Hospitalization Cost, Cumulative Cost

Outcome	Academic-preceptor	Hospitalist-preceptor	Hospitalist-alone
30-Day readmission
Percent readmission	15.5	14.6	12.6
95 % CI	(14.2, 17.0)	(13.4, 15.9)	(11.6, 13.8)
Length of stay*
Days	5.63	5.50	6.06
95 % CI	(5.55, 5.71)	(5.44, 5.57)	(5.98, 6.14)
Cost of index encounter*
US $	15,631	15,327	16,243
95 % CI	(15,463, 15,803)	(15,160, 15,497)	(16,067, 16,421)
Cumulative hospital cost within 30 days*
US $	20,102	17,798	20,515
95 % CI	(19,295, 20,940)	(16,333, 19,396)	(18,828, 22,352)

Estimates from GEE are reported on the original scale and adjusted for age, gender, sum of comorbidity categories, MS-DRG weight, ICU admission, weekend admission, weekend discharge, payer category and a clustering effect for repeated patient and provider encounters. Cumulative cost was defined as the index encounter plus readmissions within 30 days of discharge

*We included a smearing estimator to correct for retransformation bias. Unadjusted outcomes are reported in the online Appendix, Table A2