May 23, 2011

A recent analysis of 30 million hospital patients has yielded a shocking new fact: A person is 10 percent more likely to die if he’s admitted to the hospital on a weekend rather than a weeknight.

With 2.7 percent of hospital patients dying on the weekend—as opposed to 2.3 percent on a weekday—that adds up to 20 to 25 thousand additional deaths each year, study author Dr. Rocco Ricciardi told Reuters last week.

From Tufts University Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, Ricciardi based his study on a five-year sample of nearly 30 million people in 35 states who checked into hospitals for non-elective reasons.

When analyzing the data, Ricciardi says he ruled out the possibility that more people die on the weekend because they’re more likely to experience trauma then; numbers pertaining to trauma deaths remain steady throughout the seven days of the week.

Instead Ricciardi suggests that hospital personnel may be less trained on the weekend and that there’s less access to imaging and other diagnosis tools.

The study found that certain medical conditions fared worse during a weekend admission. These include pregnancy and female reproductive system problems, blood cell and bone marrow disorders, and circulatory and nervous system problems.

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