Is hospital mortality higher at weekends? If so, why?

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

Who cites it

15 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.

1. Weekend admissions and outcomes in patients with pneumonia: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2023
   Pooled it
2. Off-hours presentation is associated with short-term mortality but not with long-term mortality in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction: A meta-analysis.PloS one · 2017
   Pooled it
3. Weekend Effect and Predictors of Mortality for Patients Presenting to Emergency Department with COVID-19 Infection.Journal of personalized medicine · 2025
   Article
4. Mortality and readmission differences associated with after-hours hospital admission: A population-based cohort study in Queensland Australia.Health science reports · 2023
   Article
5. Relevant vs non-relevant subspecialist for patients hospitalised in internal medicine at a local hospital: which is better? A retrospective cohort study.BMC health services research · 2022
   Article
6. Weekday and outcomes of elective cardiac surgery in the UK: a large retrospective database analysis.European journal of cardio-thoracic surgery : official journal of the European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery · 2022
   Article
7. Timing errors and temporal uncertainty in clinical databases-A narrative review.Frontiers in digital health · 2022
   Review
8. What does it take to provide clinical interventions with temporal consistency? A qualitative study of London hyperacute stroke units.BMJ open · 2019
   Observational
9. Weekend admissions and mortality for major acute disorders across England and Wales: record linkage cohort studies.BMC health services research · 2019
   Article
10. Examining the weekend effect across ICU performance metrics.Critical care (London, England) · 2019
    Article
11. Elevated mortality among weekend hospital admissions is not associated with adoption of seven day clinical standards.Emergency medicine journal : EMJ · 2018
    Article
12. Arrival by ambulance explains variation in mortality by time of admission: retrospective study of admissions to hospital following emergency department attendance in England.BMJ quality & safety · 2017
    Article
13. Validation of the Child HCAHPS survey to measure pediatric inpatient experience of care in Flanders.European journal of pediatrics · 2017
    Article
14. Weekday and Survival After Cardiac Surgery-A Swedish Nationwide Cohort Study in 106 473 Patients.Journal of the American Heart Association · 2017
    Observational
15. The weekend effect: now you see it, now you don't.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2016
    Article

Corrections and comments

• Comment on
  Weekend specialist intensity and admission mortality in acute hospital trusts in England: a cross-sectional study.2016
• Comment on
  Weekly variation in health-care quality by day and time of admission: a nationwide, registry-based, prospective cohort study of acute stroke care.2016

Authors and funding

1 author.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

Abstract

PubMed holds no abstract for this paper.

Indexed as