Dive Brief:
- New research finds patients who suffer heart attacks after hospital hours have higher mortality rates and longer waits for procedures; meanwhile, another study demonstrated a drop in adverse events among Medicare patients who have heart attacks and congestive heart failure.
- Off-hour appearances in the ED patients with acute myocardial infarction was associated with higher short-term mortality, coming in at about 5%t, which contributes to about 6,000 U.S. deaths per year.
- Though researchers couldn't rule out other factors associated with patients as underlying causes for this excess mortality, the connection appears to be strong, "with increased mortality during off hours associated with factors that arise after presentation at the hospital," they said.
Dive Insight:
As the FierceHealthcare article notes, there seems to be a well-defined "weekend effect" in which patients admitted on Fridays end up staying longer and suffering more complications than those who are admitted during the week the hospital. In my view, there's no excuse for this. There's just no reason to simply accept that 6,000 patients need to die each year because they had the temerity to have a heart attack on the weekend. What can we do about this problem?