Study population:
Our study population was patients with a primary diagnosis of ventricular tachycardia who underwent catheter ablation. ICD 10 codes (025K3ZZ, 025L3ZZ, 025M3ZZ, 02583ZZ). Patients were excluded if they were younger than 18, had a primary insurance other than Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, or self-pay. We excluded patients having a secondary diagnosis of paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia, atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, ventricular premature beats, pre-excitation syndrome, AV nodal tachycardia, and atrial tachycardia. Also, to avoid inclusions of patients undergoing ablation of the AV junction, we excluded patients with diagnostic or procedural codes indicating prior or current implantation of a pacemaker. December discharges and patients who died in index admission were excluded on evaluating 30 days readmission outcomes. Patient characteristics included age, gender, median household income and primary insurance. Hospital characteristics included hospital bed size and teaching status.
In accordance with the HCUP data use agreement, we excluded any variable containing a small number of observations (≤10) that could pose risk of person identification or data privacy violation. This approach for identification of admissions with AF and catheter ablation has been previously described and used by other investigators [3]