Evidence map›Paper›PMID 30445942›Full record

ArticleBMC health services research2018

Weekend admissions may be associated with poorer recording of long-term comorbidities: a prospective study of emergency admissions using administrative data.

Therese Lloyd, Sarah R Deeny, Adam Steventon

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Article in BMC health services research, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
4citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

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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.

2 · The registry

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3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

4 citing papers in PubMed.

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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Therese LloydThe Health Foundation, 90 Long Acre, London, WC2E 9RA, UK. Therese.Lloyd@health.org.uk.ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5915-6136
Sarah R DeenyThe Health Foundation, 90 Long Acre, London, WC2E 9RA, UK.
Adam SteventonThe Health Foundation, 90 Long Acre, London, WC2E 9RA, UK.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundMany studies have investigated the presence of a 'weekend effect' in mortality following hospital admission, and these frequently use diagnostic codes from administrative data for information on comorbidities for risk adjustment. However, it is possible that coding practice differs between week and weekend. We assess patients with a confirmed history of certain long-term health conditions and investigate how well these are recorded in subsequent week and weekend admissions.

methodsWe selected six long-term conditions that are commonly assessed when risk-adjusting mortality rates, via the Charlson and Elixhauser indices. Using Hospital Episode Statistics data from England for the period April 2009 to March 2011, we identified patients with the condition recorded at least twice, on separate emergency admissions. Then we assessed how often each condition was recorded on subsequent emergency admissions between April 2011 and March 2013. We then compared coding between week and weekend admissions using the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test, stratifying by hospital.

resultsWe studied 111,457 patients with chronic pulmonary disease, 106,432 with diabetes, 36,447 with congestive heart failure, 30,996 with dementia, 7808 with hemiplegia or paraplegia and 5877 with metastatic cancer. Across the entire week, between April 2011 and March 2013, coding completeness ranged from 89% for diabetes to 43% for hemiplegia/paraplegia. Compared with weekday admissions, congestive heart failure was less likely to be recorded as a secondary diagnosis at the weekend (odds ratio 0.92, 95% CI, 0.88 to 0.97), with smaller but statistically significant differences also detected for chronic pulmonary disease (odds ratio 0.96, 95% CI, 0.93 to 0.99) and diabetes (odds ratio 0.95, 95% CI 0.91 to 0.99). There was no statistically significant difference in recording between week and weekend admissions for dementia (odds ratio 1.04, 95% CI 0.97 to 1.11), hemiplegia/paraplegia (odds ratio 0.99, 95% CI 0.89 to 1.10) or metastatic cancer (odds ratio 1.04, 95% CI 0.90 to 1.20).

conclusionsLong-term conditions are often not recorded on administrative data and the lack of recording may be worse for weekend admissions. Studies of the weekend effect that rely on administrative data might have underestimated the health burden of patients, particularly if admitted at the weekend.

Indexed as

AgedAged, 80 and overChronic DiseaseComorbidityEmergency TreatmentEnglandFemaleHospitalizationHospital MortalityHumansMaleMiddle AgedOdds RatioPatient AdmissionProspective StudiesRisk AdjustmentAdministrative dataCodingComorbidityMortalityRecordingRisk adjustmentWeekend effect

Identifiers

PMID30445942
PMCPMC6240268

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.