Patients admitted to hospital during weekends have higher mortality risk

A systematic worldwide data reviewed of hospitals has revealed that patients admitted in hospitals over weekends tend to have 15 to 17 percent increased mortality rate.

The analysis included 72 studies from various world regions and it concluded that patients admitted during the weekend were at a higher risk of death than weekday admission in patients in almost all categories.

The authors said that there are at least two potential explanations for the results, first, poorer quality of care is provided in the hospitals at the weekend, and second, patients admitted on at weekend could be more severely ill than those admitted on at weekday and it is highly believed that former is the much more likely the justification.

The authors further stated that only exception to this trend was for the patients who underwent surgery and due to the few numbers of studies specifically examining postoperative mortality there is a lack of association between postoperative mortality and weekdays.