With the introduction of clinical governance, the NHS Executive has identified 28-day emergency re-admission rates as a clinical indicator to be used to assess and compare performance between NHS trusts. We undertook a 3-month retrospective audit of patients identified from the trust computer as having been re-admitted as an emergency within 28 days of discharge from the general surgical division. We wanted to examine reasons for re-admission, possible errors in coding and any preventable factors in these patients subsequently re-admitted acutely.