ReviewCureus2025
Reducing Weekend Hospital Discharge Delays Without Seven-Day Coverage by Leveraging Thursday and Friday Planning.
Review in Cureus, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Weekend discharge delays remain a significant contributor to prolonged hospital length of stay, often resulting from reduced availability of consultants, imaging, case management, and therapy services on Saturdays and Sundays. Expanding hospital operations to full seven-day coverage is often proposed. However, such solutions are frequently cost-prohibitive and have shown inconsistent benefits in general inpatient settings. This review proposes a more practical and scalable alternative that focuses on leveraging Thursday and Friday as high-impact planning days to mitigate weekend-related discharge bottlenecks. Through a narrative review of 15 studies published between 2010 and 2024, we identified key operational strategies, including early multidisciplinary rounds, Friday discharge huddles, and coordination guided by standardized discharge checklists, that enable teams to proactively clear discharge barriers before the weekend. These interventions improve weekend discharge volume, reduce unnecessary hospital days, and enhance patient flow without requiring full weekend staffing models. In addition, embedding case management within the emergency department can reduce avoidable weekend admissions by directing low-acuity patients toward outpatient services and follow-up. Together, these targeted weekday efforts form a cost-effective, immediately actionable framework that hospitals can adopt to reduce weekend delays, improve efficiency, and lower overall length of stay without compromising safety or quality of care.
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Registered trials
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