The Department of Health has appeared to attribute the fact that people are more likely to die if admitted to hospital at a weekend to what they consider to be insufficient numbers of senior doctors working on Saturdays and Sundays.
The Department of Health has appeared to attribute the fact that people are more likely to die if admitted to hospital at a weekend to what they consider to be insufficient numbers of senior doctors working on Saturdays and Sundays.
However, a new study by academics at the Universities of Birmingham, Warwick and Leicester calls this assumption into doubt. The research concludes that although there is less direct consultant involvement in the care of people admitted to hospital as an emergency at weekends than on a weekday, there does not seem to be any direct link between weekend consultant staffing and the risk of dying following an emergency admission . Policy makers should therefore be cautious about attributing the ‘weekend effect’ solely to a lack of consultant staff when implementing seven-day services.
The HiSLAC (High-intensity Specialist-Led Acute Care) research team undertaking this study into the impact of specialist-led care, are an independent research collaboration funded by the National Institute of Health Research Health Service and Delivery Research Programme (NIHR HS&DR) and are based at the University of Birmingham. The Health Service Management Centre (HSMC)’s Professor Russell Mannion is a member of the research team and co-author of a paper published today in The Lancet - “Weekend specialist intensity and admission mortality in acute hospital Trusts in England: a cross-sectional study” which is the first report from the five-year HiSLAC study.
The paper, based on survey responses from more than 15,500 consultants and associate specialists across England, and drawing on hospital episode statistics (HES) data for 2013-14 finds that:
For more information and updates on HiSLAC visit the website or follow us on Twitter @HiSLACProject
