Dying for the Weekend

Abstract

Strong evidence suggests that, nationally, stroke patients admitted on weekends are less likely to receive urgent treatments and have worse outcomes across a range of indicators. Although we adjusted the results for case mix, we cannot rule out some of the effect being due to unmeasured differences in patients admitted on weekends compared with weekdays. The findings suggest that approximately 350 in-hospital deaths each year within 7 days are potentially avoidable, and an additional 650 people could be discharged to their usual place of residence within 56 days if the performance seen on weekdays was replicated on weekends.