New paper published: Sicker patients account for the weekend mortality effect amongst adult emergency admissions to a large hospital trust

HiSLAC’s latest study, “Sicker patients account for the weekend mortality effect amongst adult emergency admissions to a large hospital trust” has now been published in BMJ Quality and Safety.

Analysing anonymised data from more than 163,000 patient admissions, the study set out to determine whether higher mortality rates associated with weekend hospital admissions (the ‘weekend effect’) could be explained by patients being sicker at weekends. Uniquely, it links differences in referrals, admissions, case mix, severity of illness and outcome to test this theory.

Findings suggest that a combination of sicker patients and fewer admissions contributed to so-called ‘weekend effect’. The study goes on to look at these factors in detail and suggest reasons why this should be the case.

The findings are from the final phase of a five-year study. HiSLAC (‘High-intensity Specialist Led Acute Care’) is an independent research collaboration funded by the National Institute of Health Research Health Service and Delivery Research Programme (NIHR HS&DR) and based at the University of Birmingham.

All HiSLAC publications are free to access. The main publication is available here.

A briefing sheet – highlighting the key findings and giving a brief overview of methods used in the study – is also available.

Published: Monday, 15 October 2018

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