CHAPTER 3.3 160 linkages between hospital discharge data and death records were conducted within the data environment of the Health Informatics Centre, MOH and only de-identified aggregated forms of the data were exported. Statistical methods We reported crude readmission and mortality rates stratified by age, sex and ethnicity. For trends analyses, we standardised the outcome measures to the 2016 Malaysian population. Multivariable Poisson models was used to quantify the independent effect of age, sex, ethnicity and admission year on the study outcomes. An interaction term between admission year and ethnicity was used to determine if trend changes differed between ethnicities. There was evidence of overdispersion in the data, so quasi-Poisson models were used. A linear model was used to demonstrate statistical significance in the change in number of admissions per patient with time. Only the ethnicity variable had missing data for 0.3% observations and since this was a negligible percentage, they were excluded from the regression analysis. To assess robustness to changes in the definition of incident HF hospitalisation, we compared the estimates from one-year and three-year lookback periods with the main analyses. Statistical significance was set at 0.05. We used the R statistical software version 3.6.1 for all analyses.16 RESULTS Patient characteristics, mortality and readmission rates Between 2007 and 2016, there were 105 399 incident admissions for HF. The patients had a mean age of 64.1 (standard deviation (SD) 13.3) (Table 1). Fifty-six percent were men and 61% were Malays. Almost all of the Malay (97.8%), Chinese (87.8%) and Indian (99.6%) patients lived in West Malaysia while more than three quarters of Others (78.6%) live in the states of Sabah and Sarawak in East Malaysia. A total of 16 786 (18.1%; 95% confidence interval (CI) 17.8 -18.3%) patients had a readmission within 30 days of discharge. Mortality rates of hospitalised patients were 5.3% (95% CI 5.1 -5.4%) during inpatient stay, 11.2% (95% CI 11.0 – 11.4%) within 30 days and 33.1% (95% CI 32.9 -33.4%) within a year. The median length of hospital stay (LOS) was 3 days (interquartile range (IQR) 2-5). No
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjY0ODMw