Mortality and other outcomes after paediatric hospital admission on the weekend compared to weekday

Rebecca Barwise-Munro, Maryam Al-Mahtot, Steve Turner

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)
11 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Mortality is higher for adults admitted to hospital and for babies born on weekends compared to weekdays. This study compares in-hospital mortality and in children admitted to hospital on weekends and weekdays. Details for all acute medical admissions to hospitals in Scotland for children aged ≤16 years between 1st January 2000 and 31st December 2013 were obtained. Death was linked to day of admission. There were 570,403 acute medical admissions and 334 children died, including 83 who died after an admission on Saturday or Sunday and 251 who died following admission between Monday and Friday. The adjusted odds ratio (aOR) for a child dying after admission on a weekend compared to weekday was 1.03 [95% CI 0.80 to 1.32]. The OR for a child admitted over the weekend requiring intensive care unit (ICU) or high dependency unit (HDU) care was 1.24 [1.16 to 1.32], but the absolute number of admissions to HDU and ICU per day were similar on weekends and weekdays. We see no evidence of increased in-hospital paediatric mortality after admission on a weekend. The increased risk for admission to ITU or HDU with more serious illness over weekends is explained by fewer less serious admissions.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0197494
JournalPloS ONE
Volume13
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 May 2018

Bibliographical note

Storage of the data was funded by the FARR Institute. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the
manuscript.
Data Availability Statement: The data underlying
this study belong to the Scottish government and
cannot be shared publicly. Readers can contact the
electronic Data Research and Innovation Service
(eDRIS) on http://www.isdscotland.org/Productsand-Services/eDRIS/
to apply for access to these
restricted data sets. With the appropriate approvals
in place, readers would be able to access these
data in the same manner as the authors. The
authors did not have any special privileges in
obtaining the data set.

Keywords

  • child
  • hospitalisation
  • mortality
  • weekend

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