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Note: Northland has low or no data since April 2025. Tairāwhiti have lower inpatient volumes from March 2025. West Coast have lower inpatient volumes from July 2025.

28-day readmission dashboards

28-day readmission indicator dashboards show how many people return to inpatient mental health services within 28 days of being discharged from an acute inpatient service.

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The setting for this indicator is inpatient and community.

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Why 28-day readmission matters

A readmission within 28 days may be a sign that a person didn’t get the support they needed after leaving inpatient care. Reducing readmissions helps ensure tāngata whai ora are better supported to live well in the community and helps services make the best use of staff time and resources.

People experiencing mental health challenges can experience various issues following their transition from an inpatient service to their community (Sather et al., 2018; Tyler et al., 2019). Around 16 percent of people leaving inpatient mental health services are readmitted within one month and 40 percent are readmitted within one year (Kripalani et al., 2014; Madi et al., 2007; Mark et al., 2013; Wheeler et al., 2011).

Read the 28-day readmission evidence review.

Other Indicators

Technical Details

Data source

The data in this dashboard is sourced from PRIMHD.

Percentage of overnight discharges from the mental health and addiction service organisation’s acute inpatient unit(s) that result in readmission within 28 days of discharge.

This KPI calculates an overall readmission rate, which is the percentage of all acute inpatient discharges that were readmitted, regardless of where that readmission occurred (same Te Whatu Ora division or different division)

Indictor rationale

Psychiatric inpatient services aim to provide treatment that enables individuals to return to the community as soon as possible. Unplanned admissions to a psychiatric facility following a recent discharge may indicate that inpatient treatment was either incomplete or ineffective, or that follow-up care was inadequate to maintain the person out of hospital.

Denominator

Count of acute inpatient discharges

Numerator

Count of acute inpatient discharges where a readmission occurs within 28 days; that is where an activity exists (for the same person), where:

  • Referral team type is Inpatient — into an inpatient team
  • Activity type is T02 or T03 — acute inpatient bednight codes
  • Activity unit count > 0 — for more than 0 days
  • Activity start date is between 0 and 28 days after inpatient discharge date
    • ReadmissionActivityStartDate >= dateadd(0, day, InpatientDischargeDate)
    • ReadmissionActivityStartDate < dateadd(29, day, InpatientDischargeDate)

Technical notes

This denominator is shared with the other members of the acute inpatient KPI suite: 7-day follow-up, length of stay, and pre-admission community contact.

General terminology

An acute inpatient discharge is any referral record where:

  1. ReferralEndDate is not null — ended referral
  2. TeamType is Inpatient — into an inpatient team
  3. ReferralEndCode is DR, DW, DT or DY — ended in a way where we expect follow-up
  4. ReferralTo is not PI, AE or NP — was not moving on to another hospital setting
  5. Exists at least one activity where — there was at least one acute inpatient bednight

a. ActivityTypeCode is T02 or T03 — acute inpatient bednight codes

b. ActivityUnitCount > 0 — for more than 0 days

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