I’m fortunate not to have spent a tremendous amount of time in hospitals. I’ve had a few stays and some procedures. But, knock on wood, most were planned and not emergency-type stays. Why is that significant? Well, if you have your druthers about an upcoming procedure or treatment that requires a couple of days at your local hospital, and you can plan when your doctor wants you admitted – whatever you do – avoid a weekend admission. In fact, insist against it.
It may seem like a trivial thing, but whenever you need to go to the hospital, you should take the proper precautions to lower your risk of injury or death. And studies investigating hospital deaths shows that perhaps the most crucial way to avoid dying in the hospital is not to be admitted on the weekend.
Don’t laugh — international researchers are seriously perplexed over the significantly increased risk of death for those who go into the hospital on Saturday or Sunday.
This deadly risk doesn’t just happen in the U.S. A study of what happens to hospital patients shows that in England, Australia and The Netherlands, if you have a medical emergency and are admitted on the weekend, you have a significantly higher chance of dying in the next month.
They found that the death risk was 13 percent higher in five U.S. hospitals, 8 percent higher in 11 English hospitals and 20 percent higher in six Dutch hospitals.
Of course, I know that if you suffer an accident and need to go the hospital, you can’t control whether it happens on a weekday or weekend. But if you are scheduling elective surgery, the research found that you need to have it performed on a weekday. Not only is admission troublesome for you on weekends, but having surgery on a weekend also ups your risk of dying.
So far, the researchers who have investigated what they call the deadly “weekend effect,” cannot explain why weekends are so dangerous for patients.
They think that there might be particular medical procedures and types of diagnoses that get delayed during weekends and those delays increase patient risks. In addition, the hospital may be understaffed on weekends and the staff that gets stuck working weekends may be less experienced.
But whatever the cause of these deaths, if you can help it, stay out of the hospital on the weekend. Better yet — stay healthy.
