People admitted to English hospitals in an emergency at the weekend have, on average, a seven percent higher mortality rate than people admitted between Monday and Friday, according to research published in the journal Quality & Safety in Health Care.
The new study is the largest ever to look at the differences between weekend and weekday mortality, focusing on the deaths of patients admitted as emergencies to 163 acute hospital Trusts in England during 2005/06.
The study's authors, from the Dr Foster Unit and the Department of Acute Medicine at Imperial College London, believe the higher than expected mortality rates may be linked to less consistent specialist services such as diagnostics at weekends and a decrease in the availability of senior hospital staff. However, the authors said more research is needed before they can draw any firm conclusions about the causes of the apparent increase in mortality rates.
In particular, the research shows a higher mortality rate at the weekend compared to weekdays for patients with conditions such as heart attack, heart failure, stroke, some cancers and aortic aneurysms.
Dr Paul Aylin, the senior author of the study from the Dr Foster Unit at Imperial College London, said: "We estimate that there were over 3,000 more deaths than expected at weekends in 2005/06 compared to weekdays - more than the number of people dying in road accidents in 2006. Clearly this is a significant number of people and we need to get to the bottom of what this means.
"Hospitals have been reassessing the working hours and rotas of their doctors and, considering the impact that staff availability may be having on mortality rates, this is a timely reminder to hospitals that they must take care not to jeopardise the quality and standard of patient care available at weekends when devising new staffing rotas."
