Researchers have identified five ways hospitals could overcome the so-called “weekend effect,” a term used for the idea that surgeon-independent patient outcomes are worse on the weekend.
After controlling for patient characteristics and developing a logistic regression model, lead author Anai Kothari, MD, of the Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago, and colleagues found the following five resources hospitals employ to overcome the weekend effect:
- Electronic medical records
- Home health program
- Pain management program
- Increased registered nurse-to-bed ratio
- Inpatient physical rehabilitation
They published their findings in the October issue of Annals of Surgery.
They used the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State inpatient database from Florida and the American Hospital Association Annual Survey database and identified 126,666 patients who visited 166 hospitals from 2007 to 2011. During the study, 17 hospitals overcame the weekend effect, according to the researchers.
Potential reasons for the weekend effect include reduced staffing and resources and less experienced workers on the weekend compared with weekdays.
The study found hospitals with increased nurse-to-bed ratios were 1.44 times more likely to overcome the weekend effect, while home health programs resulted in 2.37 times odds to overcome. Hospitals that fully adopted electronic medical records and pain management programs were 4.74 and 1.48 times, respectively, more likely to beat the weekend effect. Facilities with inpatient physical rehabilitation programs saw a smaller improvement, but were still 1.03 times more likely to overcome the weekend effect.
The researchers plan on conducting a follow-up study of hospitals in California, according to a news release.
Executive Editor
Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.