It's not you, it's me: Time to narrow the gap in weekend care

摘要

Numerous studies have now described the 'weekend effect' and its negative impact on timeliness of inpatient care and mortality. Patients presenting with numerous medical and surgical problems experience better outcomes if they happen to arrive in hospital on a workday versus a weekend day. Researchers have highlighted the problem as reflecting reduced staffing and decreased access to specialised services at the weekend. Remarkably, the weekend effect was recently found to extend even to elective admissions and surgeries, raising major questions about resource planning around elective care that occurs near the end of the week.