Do people that have surgery or are hospitalized on weekends or holidays have poorer outcomes? Multiple studies over the years have consistently answered this question in the affirmative. While medical malpractice can occur anytime, our experience is that errors do occur more frequently on weekends and holidays. You are more likely to have a missed diagnosis, birth injury, or suffer anesthesia, surgical or nursing malpractice on the weekend.
Indeed, it is well accepted within the medical community that generally patients who undergo surgery on the weekends tend to experience longer hospital stays and have higher mortality and readmissions rates. In fact, this phenomenon is so well known it even has a name: the “Weekend Effect.”
Recently, a group of researchers from Loyola University Medical Center studied the Weekend Effect. The results of their study are published in the October 2015 edition of the Annals of Surgery is titled “Components of Hospital Perioperative Infrastructure Can Overcome the Weekend Effect in Urgent General Surgery Procedures.”
The study once again confirmed that patients admitted on Saturday and Sundays throughout the developed world are more likely to die within 30 days than patients admitted on a weekday. The study found that “(t)he chance of death was 8% higher in 11 hospitals in England, 13% higher in 5 hospitals in the United States and 20% higher in 6 Dutch hospitals.”
The researchers examined data on 126,666 patients at 166 Florida hospitals from 2007 to 2011. The study then examined 17 hospitals that were able to beat the Weekend Effect. The authors hypothesized that boosting hospital resources before, during and after surgery would reduce the length of patient stays, as well as the risk of death and costly readmissions. Researchers focused on 21 separate hospital resources and analyzing how these factors worked together to improve outcomes. As a result, they identified five hospital resources that help overcome the Weekend Effect:
1. Increased nurse-to-bed ratios;
2. Home health programs where skilled caregivers check on patients after they are discharged, providing wound care, administering medications, etc.;
3. Electronic medical records;
4. Inpatient physical rehabilitation programs, which identify patients who require additional physical conditioning prior to discharge or need extra resources at home; and
5. Pain management programs.
Loyola’s press release regarding the study can be found here:
[Five things hospitals can do to improve outcomes of weekend surgeries](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/luhs-fth100615.php)
The fully study can be found here:
[Components of Hospital Perioperative Infrastructure Can Overcome the Weekend Effect in Urgent General Surgery Procedures](http://journals.lww.com/annalsofsurgery/Abstract/2015/10000/Components_of_Hospital_Perioperative.16.aspx)
