An Automated Electronic Health Record Score to Estimate Length of Stay and Readmission in Patients Undergoing Radical Cystectomy for Bladder Cancer.

Patients treated with radical cystectomy experience a high rate of postoperative complications and frequent hospital readmissions. We sought to explore the utility of the Care Assessment Needs (CAN) score, derived from electronic health data, to estimate the risk of these adverse clinical outcomes, thereby aiding patient counseling and informed treatment decision-making. We retrospectively examined data from 982 bladder cancer patients who underwent radical cystectomy between 2013 to 2018 within the national Veterans Health Administration system. We tested for associations between the preoperative CAN score and length of stay, discharge location, and readmission rates. We observed a correlation between higher CAN scores and longer hospital stays (adjusted relative risk = 1.03 [95% CI: 1.02-1.05]). An increased CAN score was also linked to greater odds of discharge to a skilled nursing facility or death (adjusted odds ratio = 1.16 [95% CI: 1.06-1.26]). Furthermore, the score was associated with hospital readmission at both 30 and 90 days post-discharge (adjusted hazard ratio = 1.03 [95% CI: 1.00-1.07] and 1.04 [95% CI: 1.00-1.07], respectively). The CAN score is associated with the length of hospital stay, discharge to a skilled nursing facility, and readmission within 30 and 90 days following radical cystectomy. These findings highlight the potential of healthcare systems leveraging electronic health records for automatically calculating multi-dimensional tools, like the CAN score, to identify patients at risk of adverse clinical outcomes following radical cystectomy.