Hospital readmissions have recently been targeted as a hospital quality measure. Readmissions can increase both costs and resource utilization and are associated with poorer patient outcomes. While much research on readmissions has been done in the medical patient population, there has been little study of reasons for readmission in the surgical patient population. In contrast to medical admissions, index surgical admissions are usually planned, and post-hospital care coordination often begins before the patient is admitted to the hospital. It will be important to identify which patients have high risk for readmission after surgery and to understand whether a readmission is potentially preventable, represents a quality of care issue or indicates failure of the care transition plan. By incorporating the contributions of patient comorbidity, self-efficacy, caregiver status, procedure complexity and system factors on readmissions, we can develop a risk prediction tool to identify those patients at highest risk.