ArticleBMC health services research2020
Weekend effect on mortality by medical specialty in six secondary hospitals in the Helsinki metropolitan area over a 14-year period.
Article in BMC health services research, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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.
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.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Weekend Effect on In-Hospital Mortality-First 13-Year Retrospective Observational Study in Slovakia.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Healthcare-associated adverse events and readmission to the emergency departments within seven days after a first consultation.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Impact of the day of the week on the discontinuation of broad-spectrum antibiotic prescriptions; a multi-centered observational study.Scientific reports · 2021Observational
- The "weekend effect" and outcomes after clipping of ruptured intracranial aneurysms-general healthcare metrics and trained vascular neurosurgeons.Acta neurochirurgica · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe weekend effect is the phenomenon of a patient's day of admission affecting their risk for mortality. Our study reviews the situation at six secondary hospitals in the greater Helsinki area over a 14-year period by specialty, in order to examine the effect of centralization of services on the weekend effect.
methodsOf the 28,591,840 patient visits from the years 2000-2013 in our hospital district, we extracted in-patients treated only in secondary hospitals who died during their hospital stay or within 30 days of discharge. We categorized patients based on the type of each admission, namely elective versus emergency, and according to the specialty of their clinical service provider and main diagnosis.
resultsA total of 456,676 in-patients (292,399 emergency in-patients) were included in the study, with 17,231 deaths in-hospital or within 30 days of discharge. A statistically significant weekend effect was observed for in-hospital and 30-day post-discharge mortality among emergency patients for 1 of 7 specialties. For elective patients, a statistically significant weekend effect was visible in in-hospital mortality for 4 of 8 specialties and in 30-day post-discharge mortality for 3 of 8 specialties. Surgery, internal medicine, and gynecology and obstetrics were most susceptible to this phenomenon.
conclusionsA weekend effect was present for the majority of specialties for elective patients, indicating a need for guidelines for these admissions. More disease-specific research is necessary to find the diagnoses, which suffer most from the weekend effect and adjust staffing accordingly.
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