Shortly after taking office, the current government stated its intention to regard readmission to hospital within 30 days as indicative of a previous failed discharge and unworthy of payment.1 This position was reiterated by the Health Secretary in the lay media as the ‘perverse situation at the moment where a hospital might discharge patients too soon and when the patient comes back as an emergency, the hospital gets paid again’.2 Using non-elective readmission as a measure of care quality, we conducted a retrospective audit of …