Risk models that score each patient's 30-day readmission probability at discharge using clinical features (diagnosis, comorbidities, prior admissions, lab values), operational features (discharge destination, follow-up appointment timing), and social determinants where documented. High-risk patients enter an intensified post-discharge protocol. Allocates your care management resources to the patients who most need them rather than applying uniform follow-up to all discharges. Reduces readmission rates and the associated penalties in value-based care arrangements.
Data is pulled at discharge from your EHR via FHIR R4 Observation, Condition, Encounter, and MedicationRequest resources, or via direct HL7 v2 ORU and ADT message parsing where FHIR is not available. Clinical note text at discharge is processed with Med7 (for entity recognition of medications, dosages, and diagnoses) or AWS Comprehend Medical for ICD-10 and RxNorm entity extraction, providing NLP-derived features alongside structured EHR fields. The model architecture uses logistic regression as a transparent baseline (auditable by clinicians and compliance teams) with gradient boosting as the performance layer, most deployments use the logistic regression output for clinician-facing explanation ("the three factors contributing most to this patient's risk are...") and the gradient boosting score for triage prioritisation. Model features are selected to exclude protected characteristics under 45 CFR Part 164 and CMS non-discrimination requirements. Risk score output includes the top contributing factors per patient, presented in the EHR workflow or a discharge summary dashboard, not a black-box score that clinicians are expected to act on without rationale. Risk stratification thresholds (low, medium, high) are calibrated to your post-discharge care management capacity, not set to generic cut-points.