Inclusion of social determinants of health improves sepsis readmission prediction models

Objective Sepsis has a high rate of 30-day unplanned readmissions. Predictive modeling has been suggested as a tool to identify high-risk patients. However, existing sepsis readmission models have low predictive value and most predictive factors in such models are not actionable. Materials and Methods Data from patients enrolled in the AllofUs Research Program cohort from 35 hospitals were used to develop a multicenter validated sepsis-related unplanned readmission model that incorporates clinical and social determinants of health (SDH) to predict 30-day unplanned readmissions. Sepsis cases were identified using concepts represented in the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership. The dataset included over 60 clinical/laboratory features and over 100 SDH features. Results Incorporation of SDH factors into our model of clinical and demographic features improves model area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) significantly (from 0.75 to 0.80; P < .001). Model-agnostic interpretability techniques revealed demographics, economic stability, and delay in getting medical care as important SDH predictive features of unplanned hospital readmissions. Discussion This work represents one of the largest studies of sepsis readmissions using objective clinical data to date (8935 septic index encounters). SDH are important to determine which sepsis patients are more likely to have an unplanned 30-day readmission. The AllofUS dataset provides granular data from a diverse set of individuals, making this model potentially more generalizable than prior models. Conclusion Use of SDH improves predictive performance of a model to identify which sepsis patients are at high risk of an unplanned 30-day readmission.