Predicting hospital readmission of elderly cardiac patients.

Sixty hospitalized elderly cardiac patients were tested using the Geriatric Functional Rating Scale (GFRS) and were followed four months postdischarge. Significant relationships were found between GFRS scores and readmission status. These data substantiate the potential usefulness of GFRS as a predictive instrument to identify those high-risk hospitalized elderly cardiac patients who need social-health services in the posthospital recovery period.