Towards a patient journey perspective on causes of unplanned readmissions using a classification framework: results of a systematic review with narrative synthesis.

This review showed that causes for readmissions were mainly evaluated from a hospital perspective. However, causes beyond the scope of the hospital can also play a major role in unplanned readmissions. Opinions regarding preventability seem to depend on contextual factors of the readmission. This study presents a cause classification framework that could help future readmission studies to gain insight into a broad range of causes for readmissions in a patient journey.