Patients ‘more likely to die’ following bank holiday emergency hospital care

A study in Scotland found patients admitted over public holidays were 48 per cent more likely to die within seven days and 27 per cent more likely to die within 30 days.

International evidence already suggests death rates among emergency admissions are around 10 per cent higher at weekends, amounting to 3,000 extra fatalities a year in England alone.

The new findings, published online in the Emergency Medicine Journal, further underline moves by the NHS to deliver better seven-day care amid growing concerns over standards outside weekdays.

Researchers examined death rates among 20,000 people admitted as emergencies to Dumfries Infirmary in the three years to December 2010, including nearly six per cent over bank holiday periods.

Death rates were only slightly higher at weekends but researchers said they were “significantly higher” over public holiday periods including following or preceding weekends.

Some 5.8 per cent of patients died within seven days of being admitted over public holidays compared with 3.7 per cent of those admitted on other days of the week, while 11.3 per cent died within 30 days compared with 8.7 per cent of those admitted at other times.

There were no differences in senior doctor staffing between normal weekends and weekdays at the hospital which is often used to explain differences in death rates.

But the authors said public holidays are usually tagged on to a weekend, providing a three or four-day holiday, leading to what they describe as a “cumulative effect”.

They said: “If we assume that patients with severe illnesses are no more likely to be admitted on any one day of the week than any other, then it becomes difficult to escape the view that a cumulative effect of lack of services and/or lack of doctors on public holidays must have a part to play in the higher public holiday mortality demonstrated in this study.”